Вы находитесь на странице: 1из 330

Edited by Douglas A.

Vakoch
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Offce of Communications
Public Outreach Division
History Program Offce
Washington, DC
2014
The NASA History Series
NASA SP-2013-4413
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Archaeology, anthropology, and interstellar communication / edited by
Douglas A. Vakoch.
p. cm. -- (Te NASA history series)
SP-2013-4413.
1. Life on other planets. 2. Extraterrestrial anthropology. 3.
Interstellar communication. 4. Exobiology. 5. Archaeoastronomy. I.
Vakoch, Douglas A.
QB54.A74 2012
999--dc23
2011053528
w
w
w
.n
asa.g
o
v
/
e
b
o
o
k
s
This publication is available as a free download at
http://www.nasa.gov/ebooks.
9 781626 830134
9 0 0 0 0
ISBN 978-1-62683-013-4
To Chris Neller,
for her ongoing support of the
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
List of Figures xi
I. Introduction
Reconstructing Distant Civilizations
and Encountering Alien Cultures
Douglas A. Vakoch xiii
II. Historical Perspectives on SETI
Chapter 1: SETI: The NASA Years
John Billingham 1
Chapter 2: A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
Stephen J. Garber 23
Chapter 3: The Role of Anthropology in SETI
A Historical View
Steven J. Dick 49
III. Archaeological Analogues
Chapter 4: A Tale of Two Analogues
Learning at a Distance from the Ancient Greeks and Maya and the
Problem of Deciphering Extraterrestrial Radio Transmissions
Ben Finney and Jerry Bentley 65
Chapter 5: Beyond Linear B
The Metasemiotic Challenge of Communication
with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Richard Saint-Gelais 79
Chapter 6: Learning To Read
Interstellar Message Decipherment from Archaeological and
Anthropological Perspectives
Kathryn E. Denning 95
v
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Chapter 7: Inferring Intelligence
Prehistoric and Extraterrestrial
Paul K. Wason 113
IV. Anthropology, Culture, and Communication
Chapter 8: Anthropology at a Distance
SETI and the Production of Knowledge
in the Encounter with an Extraterrestrial Other
John W. Traphagan 131
Chapter 9: Contact Considerations
A Cross-Cultural Perspective
Douglas Raybeck 143
Chapter 10: Culture and Communication
with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
John W. Traphagan 161
Chapter 11: Speaking for Earth
Projecting Cultural Values Across Deep Space and Time
Albert A. Harrison 175
V. The Evolution and Embodiment of Extraterrestrials
Chapter 12: The Evolution of Extraterrestrials
The Evolutionary Synthesis and Estimates
of the Prevalence of Intelligence Beyond Earth
Douglas A. Vakoch 191
Chapter 13: Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of
Interstellar Communication
Garry Chick 205
Chapter 14: Ethology, Ethnology, and Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Dominique Lestel 229
vi
Reconstructing Distant Civilizations and Encountering Alien Cultures
Chapter 15: Constraints on Message Construction for Communication
with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
William H. Edmondson 237
VI. Epilogue
Mirrors of Our Assumptions
Lessons from an Arthritic Neanderthal
Douglas A. Vakoch 251
About the Authors 255
NASA History Series 261
Index 279
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To the authors of Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication, I
especially appreciate the innovation and depth of the research they share here.
Tey deserve special thanks for thoughtfully engaging one anothers ideas,
as refected in the numerous cross-references between chapters throughout
the volume. Paul Dufeld captures the essential themes of this conversation
in his compelling cover art, and I am grateful for his creativity in translating
these ideas into images, giving readers an overview of the contents before
they even open the book.
Over the past 15 years, many colleagues from the SETI Institute have
shared with me their insights into the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
as well as the ways we can best communicate this work to the broader
public. I especially thank Molly Bentley, Anu Bhagat, James Brewster, Steve
Brockbank, Edna DeVore, Frank Drake, Sophie Essen, Andrew Fraknoi, John
Gertz, Gerry Harp, Jane Jordan, Ly Ly, Michelle Murray, Chris Munson,
Chris Neller, Tom Pierson, Karen Randall, Jon Richards, Pierre Schwob, Seth
Shostak, and Jill Tarter. I am grateful to John Billingham for his many years of
friendship, generosity, and commitment to exploring the societal dimensions
of astrobiology. We miss him, but his memory lives on.
I warmly acknowledge the administration, faculty, staf, and students of
the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), especially for support from
Joseph Subbiondo, Judie Wexler, and Tanya Wilkinson. Much of the work
of editing this volume was made possible through a generous sabbatical leave
from my other academic responsibilities at CIIS. In addition, I thank Harry
and Joyce Letaw as well as Jamie Baswell for their intellectual and fnancial
contributions to promoting the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Among the organizations that have fostered discussions on the topics in
this volume, I especially want to recognize the International Academy of
Astronautics (IAA), the American Anthropological Association (AAA), and
the Society for Cross-Cultural Research (SCCR). Several of the chapters in this
volume are elaborations of papers frst presented at AAA annual conferences.
For their openness to considering a new topic for the NASA History Series, I
thank Steve Dick and Bill Barry. I am also grateful to them and to Steve Garber
for leading such a thorough and helpful review process. I appreciate Yvette
Smith for moving this volume into production so steadfastly and efciently,
and I thank Nadine Andreassen for her diligence in publicizing the book.
On the production side, Kimberly Ball Smith and Mary Tonkinson care-
fully copyedited the manuscript, and Heidi Blough created the index. In
the Communications Support Services Center at NASA Headquarters, I
ix
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
thank the entire team that brought this book to print. Mary Tonkinson and
George Gonzalez proofread the layout, and Tun Hla handled the printing.
Supervisors Christopher Yates, Barbara Bullock, Cindy Miller, and Michael
Crnkovic oversaw the entire process.
To my wife, Julie Bayless, I am grateful in more ways that I can or will
share here. Tank you, forever.
x
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Introduction.1. Tis Earth Speaks message puts the senders loca-
tionthe town of Les Ulis, Francein broader geographical and
astronomical contexts. (SETI Institute)
Figure 2.1. High-Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS) observations
begin on 12 October 1992 in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. (Photo: Seth
Shostak)
Figure 2.2. Te Arecibo radio telescope, 12 October 1992. (Photo: Seth
Shostak)
Figure 2.3. Bernard Oliver speaks at ceremonies marking the start of the
HRMS program in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, on 12 October 1992, with
(left to right) John Billingham, an unidentifed Puerto Rican ofcial,
Oliver, and John Rummel. (Photo: Seth Shostak)
Figure 15.1. An example of Northumbrian Rock Art. Tree-dimensional
scan produced by M. Lobb and H. Moulden (IBM VISTA Centre/
University of Birmingham), used by permission and provided courtesy
of V. Gafney.
Figure 15.2. Te Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke MS 408), fol. 9
r
,
General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University, New Haven, Connecticut.
Figure 15.3. As this composite image of the Earth at night suggests, our
planets emitted light could serve as a biomarker for extraterrestrial
intelligence. Te image was assembled from data collected by the Suomi
National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite in April 2012 and October
2012. (NASA)
Figure Epilogue.1. NASAs Phoenix Mars Lander poised to deposit a soil
sample into one of its ovens, where samples were heated to determine
their chemical composition. (NASA)
xi
INTRODUCTION
Reconstructing Distant
Civilizations and Encountering
Alien Cultures
Douglas A. Vakoch
On 8 April 1960, astronomer Frank Drake inaugurated a new era in the
search for civilizations beyond Earth. Pointing the 85-foot telescope of the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West
Virginia, toward two Sun-like stars in the galactic neighborhood, he sought
the frst direct evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Tuning to a frequency
of 1420 megahertz, he hoped that this would be a universal meeting place,
known also by astronomers on other worlds as being the emission frequency
of hydrogen, the universes most prevalent element.
Although this experiment, which Drake dubbed Project Ozma, did not
confrm the existence of life beyond Earth, it did inspire the development
of a new feld of science: the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
Since that frst experiment, capable of eavesdropping on the universe at only
one frequency at a time, the power and extent of SETI searches have grown
dramatically. As one measure of this disciplines development and to com-
memorate the 50th anniversary of Project Ozma, astronomers from 15 coun-
tries on 6 continents conducted a coordinated series of observations called
Project Dorothy, named after the protagonist of L. Frank Baums book series
about the enchanted world of Oz.
1
If a radio signal is detected in a modern SETI experiment, we could well
know that another intelligence exists, but not know what they are saying.
Any rapid, information-rich fuctuations encoded in the radio signals might
be smoothed out while collecting weak signals over extended periods of time,
1. Shin-ya Narusawa, et al., Project Dorothy: The 50th Anniversary of Project OZMA, Worldwide
Joint SETI Observation, paper presented at the annual meeting of the Astronomical Society of
Japan, September 2011.
xiii
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
increasing the chances of detecting these signals, but losing the content they
bear in the process.
Even if we detect a civilization circling one of our nearest stellar neighbors,
its signals will have traversed trillions of miles, reaching Earth after travel-
ing for years. Using a more sober estimate of the prevalence of life in the
universe, our closest interstellar interlocutors may be so remote from Earth
that their signals would take centuries or millennia to reach us. Moreover,
any civilization we contact will have arisen independently of life on Earth,
in the habitable zone of a star stable enough to allow its inhabitants to evolve
biologically, culturally, and technologically. Te evolutionary path followed
by extraterrestrial intelligence will no doubt diverge in signifcant ways from
the one traveled by humans over the course of our history.
To move beyond the mere detection of such intelligence, and to have any
realistic chance of comprehending it, we can gain much from the lessons
learned by researchers facing similar challenges on Earth. Like archaeologists
who reconstruct temporally distant civilizations from fragmentary evidence,
SETI researchers will be expected to reconstruct distant civilizations separated
from us by vast expanses of space as well as time. And like anthropologists,
who attempt to understand other cultures despite diferences in language
and social customs, as we attempt to decode and interpret extraterrestrial
messages, we will be required to comprehend the mindset of a species that
is radically Other.
Historically, most of the scientists involved with SETI have been astrono-
mers and physicists. As SETI has grown as a science, scholars from the social
sciences and humanities have become involved in the search, often focusing
on how humans may react to the detection of extraterrestrial life. Te pres-
ent volume examines the contributions of archaeology and anthropology to
contemporary SETI research, drawing on insights from scholars representing
a range of disciplines. Te remaining sections of this introduction provide
a chapter-by-chapter overview of the book as a whole. As befts a volume
published in the NASA History Series, this collection emphasizes the value
of understanding the historical context of critical research questions being
discussed within the SETI community today.
Early versions of some of the chapters in this book were frst presented
in symposia on SETI organized by the editor and held at three annual con-
ferences of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Te broader
signifcance of these AAA sessions is that they represent the major SETI
research areas judged important by the established scholarly community of
anthropologists and archaeologists in the United States today. Indeed, the
research presented in these sessions was sufciently important that for three
consecutive years, symposia addressing SETI were selected for this professions
xiv
Reconstructing Distant Civilizations and Encountering Alien Cultures
major annual conference after a rigorous and competitive peer-review process
that rejects a sizable proportion of symposium proposals.
2

Each of these symposia addressed topics that were related to the overarching
conference themes for their respective years. Te frst AAA session to deal specif-
cally with SETI was held during the 2004 annual meeting, which had as its theme
Magic, Science, and Religion. Approaching this theme through an examina-
tion of scientifc knowledge, this SETI symposium was called Anthropology,
Archaeology, and Interstellar Communication: Science and the Knowledge of
Distant Worlds. Te next year, when attendees met in Washington, DC, to
explore the conference theme Bridging the Past into the Present, the SETI
session was named Historical Perspectives on Anthropology and the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and was later featured as a cover story in
Anthropology Today, a leading international journal. Finally, at the 2006 confer-
ence on the theme Critical Intersections/Dangerous Issues, the SETI sympo-
sium emphasized the intersection of multiple disciplinary perspectives from the
social sciences. Tat symposium, titled Culture, Anthropology, and the Search
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), was held in San Jose, California.
3
Historical Perspectives on SETI
To say that astronomers have been conducting SETI experiments for over
a half-century might give the unwarranted impression that the search has
been continuous. On the contrary, the earliest projects were of limited scope
and duration, relying on existing observatories used in novel ways, with the
addition of signal processing capable of distinguishing artifcial signals from
the cosmic background noise. Even the most ambitious project of the 1980s
and early 1990s, NASAs SETI program, came about through an incremental
approach, as detailed in this volume by John Billingham in SETI: Te NASA
Years. Originally trained as a physician, as the former chief of NASAs SETI
program, Billingham provides an autobiographical account of the key players
2. As Steven J. Dick notes in his chapter in this book, The Role of Anthropology in SETI: A
Historical View, a symposium at the 1974 annual convention of the American Anthropological
Association addressed topics related to extraterrestrial anthropology, although this early ses-
sion was not narrowly focused on SETI, as were the 20042006 symposia.
3. For a more in-depth description of these SETI symposia, see Douglas A. Vakoch,
Anthropological Contributions to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, in Bioastronomy
2007: Molecules, Microbes, and Extraterrestrial Life, ASP Conference Series, vol. 420, ed.
Karen J. Meech et al. (San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacic, 2009), pp. 421427.
xv
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
and events that eventually led to an innovative program with a multimillion-
dollar annual budget. Trough a methodical process that moved from a small
in-house feasibility study, through a clearly articulated design study, to a
series of in-depth science workshops, Billingham and his colleagues built the
foundation for a NASA-sponsored search that commenced on 12 October
1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbuss arrival in the New World.
But just one year into this project that was planned to continue for a
decade, funding was cut and the project terminated. As historian Stephen
J. Garber details in A Political History of NASAs SETI Program, chapter
2 of this volume, the reasons were political and not scientifc. NASAs SETI
program had encountered political opposition earlier but had survived. In
1978, Senator William Proxmire (D-WI) had given the program a Golden
Fleece Award, declaring it a waste of taxpayers money. Ultimately, however,
Proxmire was convinced by astronomer Carl Sagan that the detection of extra-
terrestrial intelligence would provide evidence that civilizations can survive
their technological adolescencea conclusion that both of them deemed
important at a time when humankinds own future seemed uncertain.
Senator Richard Bryan (D-NV), who targeted NASAs SETI program in
the early 1990s, was less open to persuasion. And so, in the fall of 1993, the
program was terminated. At a time when concerns over the federal budget
defcit were paramount, SETI became a natural target, lacking lobbyists from
industry to advocate for it in Congress. In the same year, NASA also faced
other challenges: the Hubble Space Telescope was still sufering from faulty
optics, and the multibillion-dollar International Space Station Program still
needed to be funded. Despite repeated endorsements of SETI by the National
Academy of Sciences and the strong consensus among scientists about how
and where to search for signals from extraterrestrials, political realities pre-
vailed and NASAs funding for the project was eliminated.
With the end of NASAs SETI program, astronomers increasingly relied on
private funding for SETI experiments. As the number and variety of projects
increased, those involved in the search engaged social scientists in an efort
to plan for success. As historian Steven J. Dick makes clear in his chapter
Te Role of Anthropology in SETI: A Historical View, this engagement
started on a small scale shortly after the Project Ozma experiment took place.
Beginning in the early 1960s, anthropologists sporadically debated the rel-
evance of human evolution to understanding extraterrestrial civilizations, and
they attempted to anticipate the cultural impacts of detecting extraterrestrial
intelligence. Anthropologists contributed to this dialogue through a variety
of meetings, including a joint Soviet-U.S. conference and NASA workshops
on the evolution of intelligence and technology, as well as the societal impact
of discovering life beyond Earth.
xvi
Reconstructing Distant Civilizations and Encountering Alien Cultures
Among the outcomes of these collaborations with the SETI community,
anthropologists contributed to discussions of the Drake Equation, a heuristic
that estimates the number of civilizations in a galaxy currently broadcast-
ing evidence of their existence. In particular, anthropologists attempted to
quantify the likelihood that intelligence and technology would evolve on
life-bearing worlds.
By Dicks analysis, if SETI scientists fnd the sort of artifcial signal they
seek, we can be sure it originated from an intelligence that has changed signif-
cantly over its lifetime. If extraterrestrial intelligence is much longer lived than
human civilizationa presupposition of most SETI search strategiesthen
in Dicks view it will inevitably have undergone cultural evolution.
Archaeological Analogues
In standard SETI scenarios, where humans and extraterrestrials are sepa-
rated by trillions of miles, even a signal traveling at the speed of light may
take centuries or millennia to reach its recipients. Tus, interstellar com-
munication may be a one-way transmission of information, rather than a
back-and-forth exchange. As we search for analogies to contact at inter-
stellar distances, archaeology provides some intriguing parallels, given that
its practitionerslike successful SETI scientistsare charged with recon-
structing long-lost civilizations from potentially fragmentary evidence.
In A Tale of Two Analogues: Learning at a Distance from the Ancient
Greeks and Maya and the Problem of Deciphering Extraterrestrial Radio
Transmissions, anthropologist Ben Finney and historian Jerry Bentley
suggest that we might gain clues to decoding extraterrestrial messages by
examining past attempts to decode dead languages right here on Earth. As
their chapter shows, however, we need to be cautious about which examples
to use for our case studies. Given the importance this analogy has played
in SETI circles over the years, and the fact that the lessons highlighted in
Finney and Bentleys chapter are also applicable to other translation and
decryption challenges addressed elsewhere in this volume, an extended
preview of their argument is in order.
Finney and Bentley begin by noting an oft-cited analogy for detecting
a message-laden signal from space: the transmission of knowledge from
ancient Greece to medieval Europe. During the Dark Ages, European schol-
ars had lost vast numbers of Greek works on philosophy, literature, and
science. Fortunately, however, copies of these treatises were preserved by
Islamic scholars, particularly in Spain and Sicily. Tus, as Europe entered
the Renaissance, Western scholars were able to recover these Greek classics
xvii
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
from Islamic centers of learning, either directly from the original manu-
scripts or through Arabic translations. And over the succeeding decades
and centuries, the young European civilization was able to learn from
the older Greek civilization, even though the two were separated by long
expanses of time.
Te analogy is an apt one for contact between Earth and the extraterrestrial
civilizations being sought by SETI, because if we do detect information-rich
signals, they may come from civilizations long since dead. Te impact may be
even more edifying for us than the infux of classical scholarship was for early
modern Europe. Tis reclaiming of ancient knowledge provided Renaissance
Europeans with alternative ways of viewing the world, which led, in turn, to
new syntheses of early modern and ancient insights. If someday we detect
and decode messages from civilizations beyond Earth, we will have similar
opportunities to juxtapose terrestrial and otherworldly views.
But, Finney and Bentley warn us, it may not be quite that easy. While
the Greek comparison is informative, as with any analogy, it does not tell the
whole story. For a more nuanced understanding, they turn to other examples
of decoding ancient scripts: Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphics. Considering
here only the frst case, the key to decoding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics
was found in a slab now known as the Rosetta Stone, discovered in 1799 by
Napoleons army during a French military campaign in Egypt. Tis stone
contains the same text written in three languages. Because 19th-century
European linguists could read one of these languages, they were eventu-
ally able to compare the three inscriptions and thereby decipher the writing
system they had previously been unable to crack: Egyptian hieroglyphics.
To state what may be obvious, if we receive a message from extrater-
restrials, we cannot count on their providing direct translations from one
of their native languages to any terrestrial language. And that, say Finney
and Bentley, could limit how much we can learn from extraterrestrials. We
may be able to understand basic mathematics and astronomy, but once
extraterrestrials begin to describe their cultures, interstellar comprehension
may sufer considerably. Finney and Bentley point out that those initial
successes in decoding scientifc parts of an extraterrestrial message might
actually stand in the way of understanding more culturally specifc parts
of the message. As an analogy, they note that when European scholars
began decoding ancient Mayan hieroglyphs, their earliest successes were in
recognizing the basic numbering system used by the Maya, as well as their
calendar systems, which were based on the visible motions of the Moon
and Sun. In short, math and science provided the foundation for commu-
nication, just as many SETI scientists have predicted will be the case for
interstellar communication.
xviii
Reconstructing Distant Civilizations and Encountering Alien Cultures
Tis apparent breakthrough in reading the Mayan glyphs reinforced a
Neoplatonic idea that had circulated among European scholars for centuries
and which was usually attributed to Plotinus. Tis Egyptian-born Roman
philosopher of the 3rd century followed the Platonic tradition, in which the
bedrock of reality is not in the things we can see with our eyes and feel with
our hands; instead, ultimate reality consists of underlying Ideas or Forms that
serve as blueprints for the material world. Plotinus applied this philosophical
concept to Egyptian hieroglyphics, seeing them not as abstract representations
of objects but as direct expressions of the ideal essence or divine nature of
those objects. Tey could thus symbolize ideas without the intermediary of
merely human languages. Maurice Pope summarizes Plotinuss view this way:
Each separate sign is in itself a piece of knowledge, a piece of wisdom, a piece
of reality, immediately present.
4
Renaissance humanists likewise believed
that Egyptian hieroglyphics ofered a way to escape the messiness of spoken
language by directly representing ideas.
As it turns out, Plotinus was wrong, but he was in good company. Right
up to the early 19th century, most eminent Egyptologists agreed with him.
Tey dismissed the possibility that hieroglyphs could represent something as
mundane as spoken language. But in the 1820s, French linguist Jean-Franois
Champollion used the Rosetta Stone to draw parallels between the as-yet-
undeciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics and both well-understood Greek and
a form of Egyptian script used widely in business transactions. As a result,
Champollion was able to show that hieroglyphics often do represent sounds,
much like other languages. Tough Plotinuss dream was broken, so, too, was
the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
SETI scientists can learn an important lesson from the history of decod-
ing hieroglyphics. Preliminary assumptions about the nature of the message
can lead us astrayespecially when those assumptions help us to decode
parts of the message. While it is true that some Mayan characters refer
directly to numbers and months, the vast majority do not. Te key then to
decoding ancient hieroglyphics, and perhaps also messages from extraterres-
trials, is to remain open to new possibilities, even if they seem to contradict
initial successes.
Literary theorist Richard Saint-Gelais is less optimistic than Finney and
Bentley that the linguistic techniques used to decode ancient texts can be
successfully applied to interstellar messages. In Beyond Linear B: Te Meta-
semiotic Challenge of Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
4. Maurice Pope, The Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphic to Linear B (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1975), p. 21.
xix
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Saint-Gelais notes that the SETI scientists who receive a message from extra-
terrestrial intelligence will face a twofold task. Tey must frst recognize the
signal as a message and must then determine what it meansall without
having any prior arrangement with the sender about the acceptable ranges
of formats or contents.
As a terrestrial analogy of this project, Saint-Gelais outlines the process
by which ancient texts have been deciphered. Initially, the linguist needs to
determine the constituent components of a language on the basis of a limited
sampleits phonemes (or sounds) and words that bear semantic content.
Tis must be done without knowing, for example, how many letters the
unknown language contains and whether the variations between similar-
looking characters are due to the diferences that occur when writing down
the same letter twice or to the fact that they represent two diferent letters.
Te breakthrough in decoding unknown languages has usually come
by fnding a bilingual text in which the same passage appears in both the
unknown language and a language known to the decipherer, as in the case of
the Rosetta Stone. Even when only fragmentary texts are available, a transla-
tor can sometimes identify proper names to use as a starting point. But in
interstellar communication, we would have no bilingual texts and no proper
names recognizable by both civilizations. In those rare instances when ter-
restrial linguists have been able to break the code of a lost language without
a bilingual text or known proper names, Saint-Gelais argues, they have used
methods that would be difcult to apply to understanding interstellar mes-
sages. For example, although Michael Ventris used purely formal methods
in the 1950s to decipher Linear B from inscriptions on clay tablets found on
the island of Crete, his success ultimately derived from his ability to recognize
Linear B as a transcription of an ancient form of Greekand that recognition
required his familiarity with the Greek language.
Archaeologist and anthropologist Kathryn Denning raises similar concerns
about the view often expressed by those most involved in SETI that decoding
messages from extraterrestrials will be an easy task. In Learning to Read:
Interstellar Message Decipherment from Archaeological and Anthropological
Perspectives, she urges caution when choosing the models we use to under-
stand interstellar communication. Cryptological and other communications
approaches share with SETI certain epistemological commitments, but
Denning notes that these approaches also carry implicit assumptions that
make them unsuitable for interpreting interstellar messages. As an example,
Denning points out that Claude Shannons information theory has been
accepted in SETI circles as a useful tool for understanding communication
between species. However, Denning questions its relevance as an analogyat
least as it is often used. She notes that whereas information theory can provide
xx
Reconstructing Distant Civilizations and Encountering Alien Cultures
a quantitative measure of the complexity of a communication system, it does
not tackle the challenge of determining what the communication means.
Likewise, the SETI communitys reliance on cryptological models fails to
recognize the false analogy between, on the one hand, breaking a code con-
structed by other humans and, on the other hand, understanding a message
from an extraterrestrial. In the frst, we already know the language, and the
challenge is to fnd a key that will let us derive the original message from the
encoded message. In interstellar communication, however, we cannot assume
any shared language.
Denning, then, has signifcant reservations about the assertions of SETI
scientists who contend that combining sufcient quantities of redundant
information with select explanations, such as pictures of objects, will be
enough to give extraterrestrials access to human ways of viewing the world.
Instead, she maintains that the best linguistic analogies for comprehending
alien minds come from cases in which the meaning of communications from
other cultures remains opaque even after much study, as with the Rongorongo
script or Linear A.
Archaeologist Paul Wason agrees with other contributors to this volume
that there may be signifcant, perhaps insurmountable obstacles to interpret-
ing the specifc meaning of messages from extraterrestrials. Nevertheless, he
argues in Inferring Intelligence: Prehistoric and Extraterrestrial that archae-
ology can make a signifcant contribution by helping to clarify when a signal
is actually intended as a medium of communication. To do so, however,
requires a creative combination of diferent lines of reasoning.
Wason observes that archaeologists sometimes use ethnographic analo-
gies, drawing upon an understanding of cultures to which modern-day
anthropologies have access, so they can make inferences about past cultures
to which we do not have as immediate and complete access. Tus, stone tools
found at archaeological sites in Europe could be recognized as tools rather
than naturally formed rocks only when they were seen as akin to the stone
tools used by contemporary Native Americans. Similarly, Wason argues, SETI
scientists may misidentify signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. Te challenge,
then, is to seek a wide enough array of analogies that scientists can come
to recognize manifestations of extraterrestrial intelligence, even when they
resemble a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Once we have those analogies, Wason argues, we will also need to have an
intellectual context that enables us to identify signs of intelligence. Only
when people took seriously the possibility that chipped rocks might be prehis-
toric tools were they predisposed to look for them. Until then, this core piece
of evidence for reconstructing extinct civilizations was simply overlooked by
archaeologists doing feldwork in Europe. Te difculty of recognizing the
xxi
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
unanticipated, Wason suggests, may provide a solution to the Fermi paradox,
which asks, If extraterrestrial intelligence exists, why havent we found it?
Wason answers this question by noting that we have been unable to free
ourselves sufciently from our preconceptions of extraterrestrial intelligence
to recognize its existence.
As we assemble the varieties of data from which we will judge whether
we have made contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, Wason reminds us
of the utility of the cabling method of reasoning, in which any single piece
of evidence may in itself come up short, like the strands of a cable that each
run only part of the cables full length. Nevertheless, by recognizing that a
solid argumentlike a solid cablemay be made up of elements that are
in themselves not sufcient to determine the artifciality of a signal, but that
when intertwined may be strong, we may be open to recognizing intelligence
where we might otherwise miss it.
While Wason recognizes many problems of interpreting symbolic sys-
temsin which signs stand in an arbitrary relationship to the ideas they
signifyhe also maintains that we may be able to get a general sense of the
intent of a message, even if we cannot divine its specifc meaning. Indeed, he
suggests that even our ability to detect purposive agency may be an evolved
trait, which may be shared by intelligent beings on other worlds, making it
plausible that even if we cannot understand what another civilization is trying
to say, intelligent beings may have the capacity to recognize that someone is
saying something.
Anthropology, Culture, and Communication
In Anthropology at a Distance: SETI and the Production of Knowledge in
the Encounter with an Extraterrestrial Other, anthropologist John Traphagan
seeks an analogue for our attempts to comprehend extraterrestrial civiliza-
tions in Western eforts to understand Japanese culture. As noted earlier, in
standard SETI scenarios, contact occurs across vast interstellar distances, on
time scales of decades, centuries, or millennia. Contrary to the stereotype
of anthropologists encountering members of other cultures face-to-face,
learning their language in the process, the American anthropologist Ruth
Benedict, a key interpreter of Japanese culture to the West, relied largely
on data gathered by others for the research she was commissioned to do by
the U.S. government during World War II. Unable to observe and interact
with her subjects as anthropologists traditionally do, Benedict instead ana-
lyzed the transcripts of interviews with Japanese Americans in internment
camps in the American Southwest. Despite these limitations, Benedicts book
xxii
Reconstructing Distant Civilizations and Encountering Alien Cultures
TeChrysanthemum and the Sword provided keen insights into the Japanese
mind, though much of the theoretical framework for her interpretations was
drawn from her earlier book, Patterns of Culture.
5
Information about an extraterrestrial civilization would be far more
restricted, Traphagan argues, and our desire to rapidly assess the nature of
our interstellar interlocutors will be strong. In spite of limited data we may
have about an extraterrestrial civilization immediately after detecting a radio
signal from another world, we can expect the news of the contact to be widely
and rapidly disseminated. While anthropologists and other scholars attempt
to make plausible inferences about the nature of this alien intelligence, public
impressionsbased more on humans than on the extraterrestrials them-
selveswill quickly form. When this phenomenon is compounded with
image management on the part of the extraterrestrials, we will have to be
even more cautious about assuming that our initial evaluations of extrater-
restrials accurately refect their true nature.
6
If we make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, anthropologist
Douglas Raybeck argues that we have much to gain by studying the varied
ways that diverse terrestrial cultures have responded to contact with more
technologically advanced societies right here on Earth. In his Contact
Considerations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Raybeck considers a variety
of stances we might take upon making contact with an extraterrestrial civiliza-
tion, drawing lessons from Western colonial relationships with the Japanese,
Iroquois, Chinese, Aztec, and Mori cultures. An indigenous societys will-
ingness to absorb elements of another civilization can be either adaptive
or insufcient to survive culturally intact, Raybeck argues. Te Japanese,
being both experienced and adept at incorporating new cultural practices
even when doing so entailed signifcant social change, provide an especially
good example of the fexibility needed when encountering an extraterrestrial
civilization. Nevertheless, openness to other cultures does not guarantee a
successful engagement; the Iroquois were also fexible and resourceful in
dealing with other cultures but were ultimately defeated by a numerically
and technologically superior adversary.
5. See Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Boston:
Houghton Mifin, 1946); and Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1934).
6. The messages we have sent into space thus far focus on humans achievements and portray
our species in a positive light. For an argument that we should transmit messages describing
aspects of humankind which we often avoid, see Douglas Vakoch, Honest Exchanges with ET,
New Scientist 202, no. 2705 (22 April 2009): 2223.
xxiii
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
An isolationist stance can also fail, Raybeck argues, as it did when Chinas
unwillingness to treat Western countries as equals resulted in a serious under-
estimation of their capabilities. Yet another danger arises when the invader can
exploit existing divisions within an indigenous civilization, as was manifest
in the case of the Aztecs.
Perhaps the best model for encountering extraterrestrials, Raybeck sug-
gests, comes from the Mori, whose resistance to British incursions gained
them the respect of their enemies while helping them to retain their pride after
succumbing to more sophisticated organization and weaponry. Te implica-
tions of Raybecks analysis are considerable: although each terrestrial culture
may have a natural approach to encountering aliens, some responses may be
more efective than others. Given the probable technological superiority of
any extraterrestrial civilizations we are likely to contact, we would be wise to
consider all of our options.
In parallel with the diverse manifestations of culture we see on Earth,
Traphagan argues in his second chapter, Culture and Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, that we should also anticipate multiple extra-
terrestrial cultures on many other civilization-bearing worlds. He views cul-
tureswhether on Earth or beyondas continually changing.
7
As a result,
they allow for highly individualistic experiences of the world.
8
Consequently,
Traphagan casts doubt on the common but often implicit assumption that
7. To reect the transient nature of terrestrial cultures, we may need to abandon the
sometimes-implicit goal of designing interstellar messages that express universal truths.
For a proposal to send interstellar messages modeled after news stories, see Morris Jones,
A Journalistic Perspective on SETI-Related Message Composition, in Civilizations Beyond
Earth: Extraterrestrial Life and Society, ed. Douglas A. Vakoch and Albert A. Harrison (New
York: Berghahn Books, 2011), pp. 226235. For an epistolary model of interstellar message
construction, in which a series of messages is transmitted over an extended period of time,
akin to a series of letters, see Douglas A. Vakoch, Metalaw as a Foundation for Active SETI,
Proceedings of the Colloquium on the Law of Outer Space 49 (2007): 537541.
8. As Traphagan denes it, culture is a highly individualized process. To the extent that we wish to
communicate this view of culture to extraterrestrials, we must shift our attention from efforts
to explain cultural universals and instead focus on individual perspectives. Such an approach
is consistent with viewing interstellar messages as works of art, in which the individual artists
vision is valued and seen as valid, even though it may not be shared by othersand in some
cases precisely because it is not shared by others. For a discussion of related issues, see
Douglas A. Vakoch, The Art and Science of Interstellar Message Composition: A Report on
International Workshops to Encourage Multidisciplinary Discussion, Acta Astronautica 68, nos.
34 (2011): 451458.
xxiv
Reconstructing Distant Civilizations and Encountering Alien Cultures
technologically advanced civilizations will each progress toward a unitary
culture, unlike the varied cultures we see among contemporary humans. Even
on worlds with monolithic, global cultures, he expects room for disagreement
between individuals. As a result, he argues that if an extraterrestrial civiliza-
tion receives a message from Earth, there may be no consensus on whether
to respond.
Consistent with arguments made in several of the earlier chapters, Traphagan
anticipates signifcant challenges in understanding the intended meaning of
any message from extraterrestrial intelligence; but he contends that this should
not be our only goal. Instead, he recommends looking at the messages implicit
meanings, even if we cannot interpret their substantive content. What does their
form suggest about how extraterrestrials communicate? And what do the forms
of human messages say about us? Might extraterrestrials read the surplus radia-
tion leaking into space from radio and TV transmitters on Earth as an indication
that visual and auditory signals fgure prominently in human communication?
Such a recognition could help message recipients to prepare more intelligible
replies, even lacking a comprehension of the specifc content of the messages per
se. Similarly, the intentional signals already sent from Earth to other civilizations
as streams of ones and zeros may highlight the human capacity to think in terms
of dualisms. Given that these implicit messages may be more informative than
the explicit content, Traphagan encourages additional research on how we might
better communicate such tacit meanings to another intelligence.
Te closing chapter of this sectionSpeaking for Earth: Transmitting
Cultural Values Across Deep Space and Time by psychologist Albert
Harrisonargues the benefts of crafting messages to extraterrestrials even if
the intended recipients never get them. In contrast to the dominant strategy
within the international SETI community of listening for signals from extra-
terrestrials at radio or optical frequencies, proponents of an approach known
as Active SETI advocate transmitting intentional signals to other worlds.
9

While terrestrial radio and television signals are being accidentally broadcast
into space, as telecommunications grow more reliant on fber optics and nar-
rowly focused Earth-satellite transmission, these incidental transmissions are
expected to become weaker and increasingly rare. Tus, if we wish to make
ourselves known to other civilizations, there will be an ever greater need to
send intentional signals in the future.
9. For an overview of key arguments in the debate about Active SETI, see Kathryn Denning,
Unpacking the Great Transmission Debate, in Communication with Extraterrestrial
Intelligence (CETI), ed. Douglas A. Vakoch (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011),
pp. 237252.
xxv
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Harrison reviews past attempts to signal our existence to extraterrestri-
als, ranging from messages borne on several of NASAs Pioneer and Voyager
spacecraft in the 1970s to powerful radio transmissions sent from the Arecibo
Observatory in Puerto Rico and the Evpatoria Planetary Radar in Ukraine.
Indeed, such radio transmission eforts, though intermittent, have prolifer-
ated in the past few yearsdespite heated debates about whether humankind
should reveal its existence to potentially hostile aliens.
Harrison also notes parallels between interstellar communication and
projects to communicate with our human successors, such as marking
nuclear waste sites to be identifable by our descendants 10,000 years hence,
establishing archives on the Moon that could withstand the vicissitudes of
terrestrial confict over the millennia, and launching a satellite designed to
return to Earth in 50,000 years. (Te latter project, named KEO after three
phonemes said to be found in all terrestrial languages, was disbanded after
the death of its founder, French artist Jean-Marc Philippe.) Whether we are
attempting to communicate with distant extraterrestrial civilizations or with
the progeny of our progeny, Harrison contends, we can learn much about
human interests and values by examining what we hope to convey across the
depths of time and space.
The Evolution and Embodiment of Extraterrestrials
In Te Evolution of Extraterrestrials: Te Evolutionary Synthesis and Estimates
of the Prevalence of Intelligence Beyond Earth, I argue that many astronomers
have seen the development of intelligent life as an inevitable occurrence given
proper environmental conditions on a planet; and even though such beings
would not be identical to humans, we should expect to fnd signifcant paral-
lels. A striking contrast to this position is seen in the writings of scientists from
other disciplines, who hold widely difering views.
One clue to understanding the diferences between the anthropologists,
paleontologists, and biologists who speculate on extraterrestrials is suggested
by a historical analysis, noting who wrote on the subject. Given the relatively
small number of commentators on the topic, it seems more than coincidental
that this group includes four of the major contributors to the evolutionary
synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s. As I show, the exobiological arguments of
Teodosius Dobzhansky and George Gaylord Simpson and, less directly, of
H. J. Muller and Ernst Mayr are all related to their earlier work on formulat-
ing synthetic evolution. A survey of the views held by later anthropologists,
paleontologists, and biologists reveals signifcant disagreements among them
about evolution, disputes that persisted into the 1960s. By the close of the
xxvi
Reconstructing Distant Civilizations and Encountering Alien Cultures
next decade, many but by no means all believed that higher life, particularly
intelligent life, probably occurs quite infrequently in the universe. Tis shift
in opinion can be attributed to a growing acceptance of the evolutionary
synthesis.
In Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of Interstellar
Communication, anthropologist Garry Chick analyzes the Drake Equation,
a heuristic used to estimate the number of civilizations in our galaxy that are
capable of interstellar communication. What are the relevant factors, Chick
asks, that determine whether an intelligence sophisticated enough to create
the technology required to contact other civilizations will evolve on another
world? In the process, he demonstrates the importance of being clear about
what we mean by intelligence, culture, and technology.
Rather than focusing on a unitary measure of intelligence, such as a stan-
dardized intelligence quotient (IQ), Chick emphasizes that diferent species
may have diferent forms of intelligence. Dolphins, for example, may have a
refned auditory-musical intelligence. One is reminded here of the anthro-
pologist and physician team of Doris Jonas and David Jonas, who suggest
in Other Senses, Other Worlds that alien intelligence dependent on sensory
modalities unlike those of humans may have radically diferent ways of expe-
riencing and conceptualizing their worlds.
10
Similar ideas have been a staple
of science fction as well. Naomi Mitchisons Memoirs of a Spacewoman, for
example, suggests that radially symmetrical intelligencein this case brainy
starfshmight possess a multimodal logic to match their morphologies,
while bilaterally symmetrical species, such as humans, are more prone to view
the world in terms of simple dichotomies.
11
Although mindful of the need to keep a sufciently broad defnition of
intelligence and culture to be open to extraterrestrials with signifcantly dif-
ferent ways of encountering the world than humans, Chick maintains that
the sort of intelligence that leads to advanced technology is rare on Earth
and may be just as rare elsewhere in the universe. And no matter how we
defne culture, it is difcult to pinpoint the moment when one culture ends
and another begins. To compound this difculty, the Drake Equation poses
an additional challenge: how can we use these data to estimate the lifetimes
of independently evolved extraterrestrial civilization?
Chick ofers various approaches to determining such quantitative esti-
mates of factors in the Drake Equationfor example, by analyzing historical
civilizations or applying datasets such as the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample
10. Doris Jonas and David Jonas, Other Senses, Other Worlds (New York: Stein and Day, 1976).
11. Naomi Mitchison, Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962; rpt. Glasgow: Kennedy and Boyd, 2011).
xxvii
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
to see how often advanced technologies develop.
12
At the same time, Chick
cautions that estimates of this sort, however useful they may be in giving
some empirical basis to the terms of the Drake Equation, are fraught with
difculties, such as fnding societies sufciently isolated from one another to
guarantee truly independent technological development.
Ethologist Dominique Lestel suggests that we can proftably combine two
approaches in order to better understand the challenges of interstellar com-
munication. In his chapter, Ethology, Ethnology, and Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Lestel recognizes the difculties of making contact
with biologically diferent organisms and proposes learning from the experi-
ences of researchers who study the communication of chimpanzees, dolphins,
and other animals even more distantly related to humans. Despite the diver-
gences between the varied life-forms on Earth, Lestel notes, even species with
radically diferent morphologies can have a signifcant amount of shared genetic
materialsomething that will not be true of humans and extraterrestrials.
Lestel recommends blending this ethological perspective with an ethno-
logical approach that draws upon the lessons learned by anthropologists who
make contact with people from alien cultures. He cautions, however, that an
ethnological approach cannot be applied directly. For example, typically (but
not always, as we see in Traphagans chapter on SETI and the production of
knowledge) ethnologies are based on face-to-face contact, a situation unlikely
to occur with civilizations separated by vast interstellar distances.
Should humans ever receive a message from an extraterrestrial civilization,
Lestel predicts that the challenges faced in interpreting those messages could
provoke in humans an existential crisis. If the challenges of understanding
another civilization turn out to be as great as he expects, Lestel suggests that
recognition of this fact in a post-contact world would sharpen our aware-
ness of human understandings inherent limitsforcing us to reexamine our
fundamental presuppositions about epistemology.
Cognitive scientist William Edmondson argues that symbolic communi-
cationin which the connection between sign and signifed is arbitraryis
intrinsically limited for communicating with extraterrestrials. In Constraints on
Message Construction for Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
12. The Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS) assigns coded variables to elements of 186
representative and relatively independent cultures. The SCCS was developed by anthropolo-
gists George P. Murdock and Douglas R. White and rst described in their essay Comparative
Ethnographic Data, coded for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, Ethnology 8 (1969):
329369. An updated version of Murdock and Whites essay is available online at http://
escholarship.org/uc/item/62c5c02n.
xxviii
Reconstructing Distant Civilizations and Encountering Alien Cultures
he points out the difculty of interpreting sym-
bolic artifacts created by other humans, such as
the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age rock art of
Northumberland or the Voynich manuscript,
a late-15th- or 16th-century manuscript that
appears to be linguistic in form but remains
indecipherable to scholars.
After speculating on the physical environ-
ments in which extraterrestrial intelligence
might evolve, Edmondson concludes that the
factors afecting the propagation of sounds
could vary so much from planet to planet as to
make audition an unlikely universal. Instead,
he argues for messages based on vision, a posi-
tion that has long been advocated within the
SETI community, albeit not without oppo-
sition.
13
As one example of a visual message,
Edmondson suggests sending a Postcard
Earth, a grid-like collage of color snapshots
showing multiple scenes of our world and its
inhabitants. Interestingly, several individuals have independently submit-
ted this same type of message to the SETI Institutes online project Earth
Speaks, in which people from around the world are invited to propose their
own messages for frst contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. One pic-
torial message, sent from a participant in Les Ulis, France, shows buildings
by a lake in that city, with inset views showing the location of Les Ulis on
a map of Earth and then Earths location in a broader galactic context (see
Figure Introduction.1). Tis proposal from Earth Speaks is reminiscent of
Edmondsons idea that a technologically advanced civilization may be able
Figure Introduction.1. This Earth
Speaks message puts the senders
locationthe town of Les Ulis,
Francein broader geographical
and astronomical contexts. (SETI
Institute)
13. For an early argument promoting the use of pictorial messages in interstellar communication,
see Bernard M. Oliver, Interstellar Communication, in Interstellar Communication: A Collection
of Reprints and Original Contributions, ed. A. G. W. Cameron (New York: Benjamin, 1963), pp.
294305. For a more recent argument in favor of visual communication with extraterrestrials,
see Kathryn Coe, Craig T. Palmer, and Christina Pomianek, ET Phone Darwin: What Can an
Evolutionary Understanding of Animal Communication and Art Contribute to Our Understanding
of Methods for Interstellar Communication?, in Vakoch and Harrison, eds., Civilizations Beyond
Earth, pp. 214225, esp. p. 219. For a critique of the ease of interpreting pictorial mes-
sages, see Douglas A. Vakoch, The Conventionality of Pictorial Representation in Interstellar
Messages, Acta Astronautica 46, nos. 1012 (2000): 733736.
xxix
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
to recognize images of Earth through direct imaging techniques and thus to
connect our messages with its own independent observations of our planet.
Te chapters in this volume, then, combine incisive critique with hope
that there is a response to the skepticism behind these critiques. Addressing
a feld that has been dominated by astronomers, physicists, engineers, and
computer scientists, the contributors to this collection raise questions that
may have been overlooked by physical scientists about the ease of establish-
ing meaningful communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence. Tese
scholars are grappling with some of the enormous challenges that will face
humanity if an information-rich signal emanating from another world is
detected. By drawing on issues at the core of contemporary archaeology and
anthropology, we can be much better prepared for contact with an extrater-
restrial civilization, should that day ever come.
xxx
CHAPTER ONE
SETI: The NASA Years
John Billingham
Introduction
To this volume dealing with the interplay of archaeology, anthropology, and
interstellar communication, I have been asked to contribute a chapter on the story
of SETI at NASA.
1
Since I was involved in it from the very beginning to the very
end, 1969 to 1994, I can relate here only the highlights of that story. What follows
is therefore something of a personal history of SETI in NASA, told in sequential
form and omitting names, events, and numerous details due to lack of space.
To anyone who wishes to read a more comprehensive version of the story,
I recommend the beautifully written article by Steven J. Dick in Space Science
Reviews.
2
For even more detail, turn to the references at the end of Dicks
1. This chapter was initially prepared in 2000 for the celebration of Frank Drakes 70th birthday;
it was recently published in Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: SETI Past, Present, and
Future, ed. H. Paul Shuch (Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer, 2011), pp. 6585. All the mate-
rial in these pages remains as valid today as it was when rst written. I am also delighted that
Frank, whose name appears more than any other in this chapter,continues to be active at the
SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Frank provided some of the original stimulus for SETI
at NASA. At every stage throughout the next quarter-century he participated in making the idea a
reality. As the Father of SETI, he played an active roleespecially in the scientic community
in bringing the NASA project to fruition. In the beginning, Ozma was a bold and imaginative new
venture in the exploration of the cosmos but was considered by many to be on the fringes of the
scientic norm. By 1984, however, SETI was accepted by the scientic community as an exciting
intellectual and technical challenge, and Frank was rmly established as the Chair of the SETI
Institutes Board of Directors.
2. Steven J. Dick, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the NASA High-Resolution
Microwave Survey (HRMS): Historical Perspectives, Space Science Reviews 64 (1993):
93139. Dick is the former Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the National
Air and Space Museum (20112012), Chief Historian at NASA (20032009), and Historian
of Space Science at the U.S. Naval Observatory (19792003). On 1 November 2013, he
began a one-year appointment as the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in
Astrobiology at the Library of Congresss John W. Kluge Center.
1
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
article. Te events of the fnal year, 19931994, when NASAs SETI program
was canceled by Congress, are well chronicled by Stephen J. Garber elsewhere
in this book.
3
19591969: Ten Years of Prologue
Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison published their seminal paper
Searching for Interstellar Communications in 1959, establishing the radio
region of the electromagnetic spectrum as a logical place to search for signals
from extraterrestrials.
4
In the very next year, Frank Drake independently
conducted Project Ozma, the frst search for such signals, at the National
Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.
5
In 1961
the National Academy of Sciences Space Science Board sponsored a small
meeting at Green Bank with four objectives: to examine the prospects for
the existence of other societies in the Galaxy with whom communications
might be possible; to attempt an estimate of their number; to consider some
of the technical problems involved in the establishment of communication;
and to examine ways in which our understanding of the problem might be
improved.
6
Te meeting was notable for many things but especially the
genesis of the Drake Equation, the participation of Bernard (Barney) Oliver,
and the conclusion that the estimated number of civilizations in the Milky
Way capable of communicating with us may be smaller than a thousand
or as great as one billion.
In 1963, Nikolai Kardashev conducted the Soviet Unions frst search
for signals from extraterrestrials.
7
Te following year saw the conference on
extraterrestrial civilizations at Byurakan in Armenia, organized by Viktor
3. See Stephen J. Garber, A Political History of NASAs SETI Program, chapter 2 in this volume.
4. Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison, Searching for Interstellar Communications, Nature
184 (19 September 1959): 844846.
5. Frank Drake, How Can We Detect Radio Transmission? Sky and Telescope 19 (1960): 2628,
8789, 140143.
6. J. P. T. Pearman, Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life and Interstellar Communication: An Informal
Discussion, in Interstellar Communication: A Collection of Reprints and Original Contributions,
ed. A. G. W. Cameron (New York: W. A. Benjamin Inc., 1963), pp. 287293.
7. N. S. Kardashev, Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations, Aston. Zhurnal
41, no. 2 (MarchApril 1964): 282287, trans. Soviet AstronomyAJ 8, no. 2 (1964): 217
221, reprinted in The Quest for Extraterrestrial Life: A Book of Readings, ed. Donald Goldsmith
(1980), pp. 3947.
2
SETI: The NASA Years
Ambartsumian and Kardashev and attended entirely by radio astrono-
mers.
8
May of 1965 saw the frst use of the term CETIan acronym for
Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligenceby Rudolph Pesek of
the Czech Academy of Sciences in his proposal to the Board of Trustees of
the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) to establish an interna-
tional symposium on the subject. In 1966, Carl Sagan collaborated with
Iosif Shklovskii on an English-language version of Shklovskiis 1962 book
, , . Te translation was titled Intelligent Life in the
Universe.
9
At this time I was Chief of the Biotechnology Division at NASAs
Ames Research Center in the San Francisco Bay Area and was becoming
aware of scientists in a sister division at Ames called Exobiology, which had
been formed a few years earlier by Harold (Chuck) Klein and Richard (Dick)
Young. Tese researchers introduced me to the Shklovskii-Sagan book late in
1968, and it changed my whole life.
1969: The Embryogenesis of SETI at NASA
Trough 1969, mulling over Intelligent Life in the Universe, I began to realize
that NASA Ames might be an ideal home for a program to actively pursue
interstellar communication, as it was then known, by designing and using
a large-scale radio telescope system to search for signals of extraterrestrial
intelligent origin. In the Space Act of 1958, NASA had been specifcally
charged with the responsibility for conducting the exploration of space. Te
Exobiology Program had been established at Ames under Chuck Klein and
Dick Young. Project Viking was being defned and was to include biology
experiments designed to search for evidence of microbial life on Mars. Klein
was Project Scientist for these undertakings. Ames already had a strong pro-
gram in space science. I began to wonder whether it might be possible to build
SETI telescopes in space or on the Moon. NASA had the capabilities to carry
out all the necessary large-scale science and engineering, and one of Amess
roles was to be at the cutting edge of space exploration. Not least, I thought,
8. G. M. Tovmasyan, ed., Vnzemnye tsivilizatsii: Trudy Soveshchaniia, Biurakan, 2023 Maia
1964 (Erevan, Armenia, 1965), translated into English as Extraterrestrial Civilizations:
Proceedings of the First All-Union Conference on Extraterrestrial Civilizations and Interstellar
Communication, Byurakan, 2023 May 1964, trans. Z. Lerman (Jerusalem: Israel Program for
Scientic Translation, 1967).
9. Iosif S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan, Intelligent Life in the Universe (San Francisco: Holden-Day,
1966).
3
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
NASA and Ames would have the vision and courage to explore the oppor-
tunities and perhaps to turn them into an active new venture. I was right.
In September, Hans Mark became director of the Ames Research Center.
Mark believed strongly in personal contact, so he visited people in their
ofces and labs and engineering shops. When he came to fnd out about my
division, I put to him the notion of beginning a study efort on interstel-
lar communication. He thought it was a good idea but advised proceeding
slowly and judiciously, since it would be such a new topic at NASA. With
the agreement of Chuck Klein, then director of the Life Sciences Division at
Ames, we carried out a small initial in-house feasibility study in the summer
of 1970 and concluded that there were no impediments. Concurrently, we
ran a large summer lecture series at Ames on interstellar communication,
with Drake, Sagan, Oliver, A. G. W. Cameron, Ronald N. Bracewell, and
others as speakers.
10
In the autumn, I met again with Hans Mark, and we
decided to carry out a larger-scale conceptual study in the summer of 1971
under the aegis of the Summer Faculty Fellowship Program in Engineering
Systems Design, run jointly every year by Ames and Stanford University and
funded by NASA through the American Society of Engineering Education.
I was co-director of these programs, together with Jim Adams, professor of
mechanical engineering at Stanford. Neither of us had the right technical
background for the topic, so we decided to co-opt a third person who knew
radio science and engineering. Te two principal candidates were Barney
Oliver and Frank Drake. Barney, who was then vice president of research
and development (R&D) at Hewlett-Packard, won out because of his vast
knowledge of radio engineering. I approached him in October and asked if
he would take the job. He agreed, with enthusiasm.
1971: Project Cyclops
For 10 weeks during the summer of 1971, 20 physical scientists and engineers
(all professors in various related disciplines at colleges and universities around
the country) gathered at Ames to conduct A Design Study of a System for
Detecting Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life. Under the inspiring leadership
of Barney Oliver, and with advice from visiting experts in radio science and
engineering (including Philip Morrison), the team put together a landmark
report, which Barney dubbed Project Cyclops. Te report contained 15
10. C. Ponnnamperuma and A. G. W. Cameron, eds., Interstellar Communication: Scientic
Perspectives (Boston: Houghton-Mifin, 1974).
4
SETI: The NASA Years
conclusions, 4 of which are especially relevant here: signaling was vastly more
efcient than interstellar travel (the ratio is actually tens of orders of mag-
nitude); the microwave region of the spectrum was the best place to detect
incoming signals; the quiet region between the spectral lines of hydrogen
and the hydroxyl radicali.e., between 1420 and 1665 megahertzwas a
natural water hole for communication between species; and construction
of a ground-based phased array for interstellar communication over galactic
distances was technologically feasible.
Te conceptual design for Cyclops comprised an expandable phased array
of 100-meter, fully steerable radio telescopes and a signal processing system
that used an optical spectral analyzer to examine the 200-megahertz region of
the water hole with a resolution not exceeding 1 hertz. Should it be necessary
to build a complete system to achieve the sensitivity required to detect faint
narrowband signals from star systems within a radius of 1,000 light-years,
namely 1,000 of the 100-meter antennas, then the cost would be between
$6 billion and $10 billion, spread over 10 to 15 years. Te team also recom-
mended that NASA initiate further scientifc and engineering studies, which
would lead to a more detailed engineering systems design over a three-to-
fve-year period.
Interestingly enough, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the
Academy of Sciences of the USSR sponsored a joint conference on CETI in
Byurakan, Armenia, that same September. Some of the key U.S. delegates
were Drake, Sagan, and Oliver.
11
Oliver worked for more than a year to edit and refne the Cyclops report
before it was published in 1973.
12
Ten thousand copies were printed, and
over the succeeding years it has come to be recognized as a visionary and
technological tour de force. (It was later reprinted by the SETI League and the
SETI Institute.) At my instigation, the report included an artists rendering
of the 1,000-antenna phased array, designed to occupy a circle 16 kilometers
in diameter. Tis remarkable depiction led to a misunderstanding, which
evolved into a myth, that the full array was necessary to detect extraterrestrial
intelligence. Many people looked at the picture, looked at the price tag for
the full array, and, without reading the fne print, jumped to the conclusion
that $6 billion to $10 billion would be needed to detect an extraterrestrial
civilization. Tey were wrong on two counts. First, the array was to be built
11. Carl Sagan, ed., Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI) (Cambridge: The MIT
Press, 1973).
12. Bernard M. Oliver and John Billingham, A Design Study of a System for Detecting
Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life (Washington, DC: NASA CR-114445, 1973).
5
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
in stages, with searches performed after each stage was completed. So it was
possible that a signal would be found with only one dish, at a cost of a few
million dollars instead of several billion. Second, even the full-up array might
not have detected a signal. In any case, the myth persists even today. But I
believe it is on the wane, as Cyclops has now been gradually superseded by
the SETI Institutes Allen Telescope Array and by the proposed international
Square Kilometer Array.
19721974: Early Steps at Ames
Next, I had to fnd out if NASA would support further studies. With the
blessing of Mark and Klein, I put together a Committee on Interstellar
Communication at Ames. We were nine, drawn from diferent divisions
and branches. Dave Black was our expert on planetary systems. My deputy
was John Wolfe, a space physicist of note. On accepting my invitation to
serve, he told me that he had read the Cyclops report from cover to cover in
a single night, having been unable to put it down. At this stage we received a
boost. Te National Research Council (NRC) published its decennial report
on astronomy and astrophysics for the 1970s.
13
Prepared under Chairman
Jesse L. Greenstein, it included for the frst time encouraging words on the
future signifcance of interstellar communication and on studies that might
be undertaken in this area. Frank Drake played a major role in preparing this
section of the NRC report. By 1974, the Ames committee had produced and
sent to NASA Headquarters a comprehensive Proposal for an Interstellar
Communication Feasibility Study. We briefed John Naugle, the NASA
Chief Scientist, and his advisors from the scientifc community. Barney and
I also briefed the NASA Administrator, James Fletcher, and the Associate
Administrator for Space Science, Homer Newell. In August of 1974, we
received our frst funding, in the amount of $140,000, from the NASA Ofce
of Aeronautics and Space Technology.
At this stage it was clear to us that interstellar communication was still gen-
erally considered a novelty, a pursuit outside the respectable norms adhered
to by most of the scientifc community. We therefore decided to conduct a
series of science workshops through 1975 and 1976 specifcally to outline in
greater detail all aspects of a program to detect extraterrestrial intelligence.
13. Astronomy Survey Committee, Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1970s. Volume 1: Report
of the Astronomy Survey Committee and Volume 2: Reports of the Panels (Washington, DC:
National Academy of Sciences, 19721973).
6
SETI: The NASA Years
1975 and 1976: The Science Workshops on SETI
In 1974, after nine years of directing aviation and space biomedical and bio-
engineering research, I decided to take a year of in order to devote my time
to the nascent SETI program at Ames. Chuck Klein approved and autho-
rized me to hire a secretary. Vera Buescher came on board as the planets frst
full-time interstellar secretary. (She remained at SETI until her retirement,
as the glue that held us all together.) She and I planned the meetings of the
Science Workshops, Philip Morrison agreed to act as chair, and together he
and I worked out our goals and objectives and decided whom to invite onto
the team. Te fnal membership roster included Ronald Bracewell, Harrison
Brown, A. G. W. Cameron, Frank Drake, Jesse Greenstein, Fred Haddock,
George Herbig, Arthur Kantrowitz, Kenneth Kellermann, Joshua Lederberg,
John Lewis, Bruce Murray, Barney Oliver, Carl Sagan, and Charles Townes. I
was executive secretary. Bruce was not on the original list but called from the
California Institute of Technology to ofer his services, which we were glad
to accept. It turned out he had heard a lecture that Barney gave at Caltech
on interstellar communication and was very intrigued by it. It also turned
out that he was soon to become the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL) in Pasadena.
During 1975 and 1976, we had six 3-day meetings and accomplished
much. It became apparent that there was enough interest to fll two addi-
tional splinter workshops on extrasolar planetary detection, a neglected
feld at that time. Jesse Greenstein was named chair and David Black served
as the workshops executive secretary. We also had one splinter workshop
at Stanford titled Te Evolution of Intelligent Species and Technological
Civilizations, an emergent topic in the new domain of exobiology. It was
chaired by JoshuaLederberg.
At the fourth SETI science workshop, held in early December of 1975
in Puerto Rico, we discussed names for the new endeavor and accepted John
Wolfes proposal to use Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence instead of
Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Communication often
connotes a two-way or many-way exchange, which was not our immediate
goal. Our priority was the search. Te acronym SETI stuck and is now in
common parlance the world over.
Te report of the SETI Science Workshops confrmed the microwave
window as a promising place to begin the search and noted that progress
in large-scale integrated circuit technology had been so rapid that million-
channel, fast-Fourier-transform spectrum analyzers could be used instead of
7
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
the optical signal processing used in Project Cyclops.
14
Several other conclu-
sions emerged:
1. It is both timely and feasible to begin a serious Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
2. A signifcant SETI program with substantial potential secondary
benefts can be undertaken with only modest resources.
3. Large systems of great capability can be built if needed.
4. SETI is intrinsically an international endeavor in which the
UnitedStates can take a lead.
Workshop members made the point that the search fell under NASAs man-
date. Philip Morrison wrote a stimulating section on Te Impact of SETI
and concluded his preface with the words, We recommend the initiation of
a SETI program now.
In the middle of the workshops, Chuck Klein asked me if I would accept
the recently vacated position of Chief of the Exobiology Division at Ames. I
was delighted and changed careers forthwith.
15
With the encouraging words
of the Morrison report in hand, I established in the division a formally con-
stituted SETI Program Ofce, with John Wolfe; astronomers Mark Stull
and Charles Seeger; sociologist Mary Connors, who was to study the societal
aspects of SETI; and Vera Buescher. Barney Oliver and Frank Drake had been
participating all along, and Hans Mark continued his support from on high,
as did Chuck Klein. Without them there might have been no SETI at NASA.
1977: JPL Joins In
Early in the SETI Science Workshops, everyone assumed that the search method
would involve focusing the radio telescope beam continuously for several min-
utes on selected target stars, thus achieving high sensitivity, as in Project Cyclops.
Murray argued forcefully, however, for an additional approachnamely, to
sweep the beam across the sky so that total coverage could be realized (at the
cost, though, of a reduction in sensitivity of about one thousand-fold). At the
ffth meeting in 1976, Oliver gave inAll right, Bruce, have it your own
wayand the stage was set for the bimodal search strategy, which dominated
14. Philip Morrison, John Billingham, and John Wolfe, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
NASA SP-419 (Washington, DC: NASA, 1977).
15. Dick Young, Chief of Exobiology at NASA Headquarters, privately protested that I was only
an M.D. But I think Klein saw a potential expansion of Exobiology to incorporate SETI. In any
case, Dick and I had been, and remained, close friends.
8
9
SETI: The NASA Years
SETI at NASA from then on. Murray was by this time director of JPL and
suggested that the laboratory join with Ames to conduct SETI.
Discussions between the two Centers began in 1976. Bob Edelson took
charge of the JPL program and worked with me for several years. It became
apparent that Ames had a strong preference for targeted searches and JPL
for sky surveys. Since the approaches were complementary, it made sense to
divide responsibility between the Centers. Over the next two-to-three years,
the outline of the signal-detection system, based on a multichannel signal
analyzer (MCSA), was developed by the engineers who were beginning to
come on board. Te original plan was to use the same detection system for
both searches, though this later proved too difcult and each Center devel-
oped its own. For antennas, JPL would use the telescopes at its Deep Space
Network at Goldstone in the Mojave Desert, while Ames would use existing
large telescopes around the world.
Edelson and I were constantly traveling to NASA Headquarters for all
the programmatic and funding discussions. By 1978, the Agencys Ofce
of Space Science had taken over the funding of SETI. At Ames, astronomer
Jill Tarter came from Berkeley on a one-year National Academy of Sciences
postdoctoral fellowship and then stayed for 15 more. (She currently holds
the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the Institute.) During her time at
Ames, she gradually took over the science of SETI. At JPL, the same function
was in the expert hands of Sam Gulkis, a distinguished radio astronomer. In
1979, I organized a two-day conference at Ames devoted to the topic Life
in the Universe, which attracted an overfow crowd.
16
At this meeting Ames
and JPL were now able to present a joint paper titled SETI: Plans and
Rationale.
17
Te proposed NASA search system would achieve a 10-million-
fold increase in capabilities over the sum of all previous searches. Te MCSA
and its algorithms, at the heart of the system, would now allow a reasonable
search of Jill Tarters cosmic haystack for its needlea signal of indisput-
ably extraterrestrial intelligent origin.
19801981: The SETI Science Working Group
Ames, JPL, and NASA Headquarters decided that the emerging SETI Program
should be carried out with continuing input at a working level from leading
16. John Billingham, ed., Life in the Universe (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1981).
17. John Wolfe et al., SETI: Plans and Rationale, in Life in the Universe, ed. John Billingham, pp.
391417.
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
radio scientists and engineers in the academic community. Accordingly, we
formed the SETI Science Working Group (SSWG) under the chairmanship
of John Wolfe and Sam Gulkis. It met on six separate occasions and in 1984
produced a report containing 17 Conclusions and Recommendations.
18
Tis
report confrmed the microwave region as preferable; endorsed the bimodal
strategy; and envisaged a fve-year R&D efort to design, develop, and test
prototype instrumentation. Its frst conclusion was: Te discovery of other
civilizations would be among the most important achievements of humanity.
Its last was: It is recommended that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
be supported and continued at a modest level as a long-term NASA research
program. Te members of the SSWG were Peter Boyce, Bernie Burke, Eric
Chaisson, Tomas Clark, Michael Davis, Frank Drake, Kenneth Kellermann,
Woody Sullivan, George Swenson, Jack Welch, and Ben Zuckerman. Signifcant
contributions came also from Michael Klein, who took over from Edelson as
manager of the JPL SETI Program in 1981; Kent Cullers, leader of the Ames
MCSA signal-detection/algorithm development team; Paul Horowitz from
Harvard (who had spent a year on sabbatical at Ames and developed Suitcase
SETI); Allen Peterson from Electrical Engineering at Stanford; George Morris
and Ed Olsen from JPL; two other postdocs who had spent a year at Ames,
Ivan Linscott and Peter Backus (both of whom were to join the Ames team);
and of course Barney Oliver and Jill Tarter.
Dissidents Emerge
By now SETI was becoming better known and more respected in the scientifc
community. Tere were still skeptics, however, and Frank Tipler argued on a
number of grounds that the number of coexisting civilizations in the galaxy
was vanishingly small.
19
In 1978 the program received a Golden Fleece
award from Senator William Proxmire (D-WI), and our funding sufered
accordingly. Our position was always that we do not know the number of
other civilizations and that the only way to answer the question is to carry
out a search. Drake and Oliver argued that interstellar travel and coloniza-
tion were too expensive and that radio communications were vastly more
18. Frank Drake, John H. Wolfe, and Charles L. Seeger, eds., SETI Science Working Group Report,
NASA-TP-2244 (Washington, DC: NASA, 1984), p. xiii.
19. See, e.g., M. H. Hart and Ben Zuckerman, eds., ExtraterrestrialsWhere Are They? (New York:
Pergamon Press, 1982); and Frank J. Tipler, Extraterrestrial Intelligent Beings Do Not Exist,
Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 21 (1980): 267281.
10
SETI: The NASA Years
efcient over interstellar distances.
20
Morrison spoke out for the empiricism
of Western science: It is fne to argue about N [in the Drake Equation]. After
the argument, though, I think there remains one rock hard truth: whatever
the theories, there is no easy substitute for a real search out there, among the
ray directions and the wavebands, down into the noise. We owe the issue
more than mere theorizing.
21
Nevertheless, in the fall of 1981, Proxmire introduced an amendment to
the NASA budget that eliminated all 1982 funding for SETI. At this stage, I
had to prepare a termination plan, which was somewhat disheartening. But
Hans Mark, then Deputy Administrator of NASA, called a key meeting in
Washington with all the senior people from the Agency and leaders from the
scientifc community, who made the decision to put SETI back into NASAs
1983 budget request to Congress. So I prepared a reinstatement plan. As the
budgetary process continued through 1982, Carl Sagan and others were able to
convince Proxmire of the validity of the endeavor, so he did not oppose it again.
SETI was and still remains an easy target at which to snipe. While scientists
can argue persuasively that life is widespread throughout the galaxy, we cannot
quantify the probability of SETIs success. Tere is, however, no question that
an unequivocal discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence would be of the most
profound signifcance for humankind. In spite of this, we have continued over
the years to face opposition from a few skeptics in Congress. Much of the resis-
tance we encountered was of a political nature and happened because SETI was
such a small element of the NASA budgetultimately 0.1 percentthat it
lacked the broad-based political support of larger NASA projects.
22
SETI also
was of such intense interest to the general public that it often fgured promi-
nently in the media, which sometimes ridiculed our search for mythical Little
Green Men. What we have actually been searching for, of course, is unassailable
evidence of the existence of an extraterrestrial technological civilization, born
of cognitive intelligence. Te anatomical and physiological structure of the
extraterrestrials is a topic of major theoretical interest, but what matters most
for our search is that these beings will have fgured out, almost certainly a long
time ago, how to build powerful radio transmitters.
20. See Frank D. Drake, N Is Neither Very Small nor Very Large, in Strategies for the Search for
Life in the Universe, Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol. 83, ed. M. D. Papagiannis
(Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1980), pp. 2734; and Bernard M. Oliver, Galactic
Colonization and Other Flights of Fancy, IEEE Potentials 13, no. 3 (1994): 5154.
21. Steven J. Dick and James E. Strick, The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of
Astrobiology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), p. 144.
22. See Stephen J. Garber, A Political History of NASAs SETI Program, chapter 2 in this volume.
11
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
19821983: Good News
In 1982, Carl Sagan published in Science magazine a petition signed by 70
scientists, including seven Nobel Prize winners, from around the world calling
for international cooperation in and support of a systematic SETI program.
Tey said: No a priori arguments on this subject can be compelling or should
be used as a substitute for an observational program. We urge the organiza-
tion of a coordinated, worldwide, and systematic search for extraterrestrial
intelligence.
23
In 1982 the decennial report of the Astronomy Survey Committee (also
known as the Field Report) strongly supported SETI as one of seven Moderate
New Programs for the 1980s.
24
Teir specifc recommendation was for an
astronomical Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), supported at a
modest level, undertaken as a long-term efort rather than a short-term proj-
ect, and open to the participation of the general scientifc community. Te
Committee had a special Subcommittee on SETI, which interacted at some
length with our academic leadership, Drake, Oliver, Tarter, and many others.
At this time the new director of Life Sciences in the Ofce of Space Science
and Applications at NASA Headquarters was Jerry Sofen, who had been the
Project Scientist for the Viking mission to Mars. Encouraged by the growing
support from the scientifc community, he accepted our proposal for the frst
of the fve years of R&D funding that had been recommended by the SETI
Science Working Group; so our budget for 1983 came in at $1.65 million.
Don DeVincenzi, a key fgure in exobiology science management at Ames,
went to join Sofen in the Life Sciences Division at NASA Headquarters
and became Chief of Exobiology there and a most capable SETI Program
Manager. Also at this time, and in spite of some competition between the
Centers, Ames and JPL and Headquarters got together and agreed that Ames
would be the lead Center for SETI in NASA; and so it was until the program
was canceled in 1993.
Two other major events occurred in 1983. Barney Oliver retired from
Hewlett-Packard and accepted my invitation to join Ames as Deputy Chief
of the SETI Program Ofce. I found a special civil-service position that
ftted him perfectlyit was called expert. I was delighted with his decision,
23. Carl Sagan, Extraterrestrial Intelligence: An International Petition, Science 218, no. 4571
(1982): 426.
24. Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1980s. Volume 1: Report of the Astronomy Survey
Committee and Volume 2: Reports of the Panels (Washington, DC: National Academy Press,
19821983), p. 150.
12
SETI: The NASA Years
especially since he had no great love for the federal bureaucracy. He used to
say that he was not really suited for the job because he was neither civil nor
servile. He had always been close to us, as our principal technical colleague.
Now it became a formal arrangement, and everyone benefted. He was the
only person in NASA to hold memberships in the National Academies of
Sciences and Engineering. Our standing rose in the world. Barney wanted
to be a volunteer, but the rules would not allow that; so he was forced to
accept a salary!
Te second event was the formation of the SETI Institute. Tis was a
brainchild of Tom Pierson, then the director of research administration at
San Francisco State University. He consulted with Barney, Jill Tarter, and me
and went ahead to establish the Institute as a California research and edu-
cation nonproft corporation. Tom next wanted the best person to serve as
president and chairman of the board. Te best person turned out to be Frank
Drake. After serving for many years as director of the Arecibo Observatory,
followed by many more years as professor of astronomy at Cornell, Frank
was now the dean of science and professor of astronomy at UC Santa Cruz.
Frank accepted the position, part time of course, and everyone was delighted.
Jack Welch, professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley and director of the Radio
Astronomy Laboratory there, became deputy chair of the Institute. Tom
Pierson became executive director and ran the Institute with his astonishing
fair for leadership. Jill Tarter joined the Institute to spearhead the science,
and Vera Buescher followed to become the research assistant to the Institute
management.
19831987: Five Years of R&D
Unhappily for us, Chuck Klein retired from NASA Ames in 1984. By then
he was widely recognized as the father of exobiology. With funding of about
$1.5 million a year, Ames and JPL embarked on an intensive program to
defne all aspects of SETI in NASA. It was now formally titled the Microwave
Observing Project (MOP). I worked with Mike Klein on the programmatic
aspects, Barney oversaw the technology, and Jill Tarter and Sam Gulkis were
the chief scientists. Elyse Murray joined the Ames team in 1983, and it wasnt
long before we realized she was a super secretary.
New spectrometers with resolutions of millions of channels were needed.
Some of the original thinking about ways of solving this difcult problem
came from Bob Machol, professor of systems at Northwestern University,
who had joined us over the years on a series of sabbaticals. He talked with
Alan Despain of UC Berkeley. Ten Despain and Allen Peterson and Ivan
13
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Linscott at Stanford developed the digital technology for the frst Ames
MCSA. At Ames, Kent Cullers led the signal-detection team in the design
of very sophisticated algorithms to search for both continuous wave and
pulsed signals and to reject radio frequency interference, one of SETIs
major and continuing problems.
25
Te prototype narrowband (1-hertz)
signal-detection system had 74,000 channels and was tested on a 26-meter
telescope at Goldstone from 1985 to 1987. It succeeded in detecting the
1-watt transmitter on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft at a distance of 4.5 bil-
lion miles. At JPL, Mike Klein, ably assisted by engineer Bruce Crow,
supervised the corresponding development of their wide-band spectrum
analyzer, which was tailored to the needs of the sky survey. From 1985
onward, Klein succeeded in obtaining support from the NASA Ofce of
Telecommunications and Data Acquisition to use part of the Deep Space
Network and for some of their engineering development work. Tis support
was to continue for the remainder of the program.
During this period there was a reorganization at Ames, and I became head
of an expanded Life Sciences Division, which now included exobiology and
SETI; ecosystem science and technology; and space biology, physiology, and
medicine. In SETI, Ames and JPL wrote a formal Program Plan, approved
by Barney Oliver for Ames and Mike Klein for JPL, which we submitted to
Headquarters and which was adopted in March 1987. Jill Tarter played a key
role in putting it together, and it was a major milestone. Te plan proposed
a 10-year, $73.5-million search for narrowband signals. Te search was to be
composed of two complementary components: a targeted search, carried out
by Ames; and a sky survey, carried out by JPL. In addition to the technical,
managerial, and administrative details, we made sure that the plan included
sections on the following additional material: the intimate link between
SETI and exobiology; evaluations from the scientifc community; use of the
sophisticated instrumentation for radio astronomy and other possible areas;
a summary of the manifestations of interest by the public and the media and
of the incorporation of SETI into college courses around the country; and
an annotated bibliography by Charles Seeger, which included references to
the extensive bibliography on SETI that had been published in the Journal
of the British Interplanetary Society and then continued to appear there for
25. Kent Cullers, Three Pulse/Multiple Stage Continuous Wave Detection Algorithms, in
BioastronomyThe Next Steps, ed. George Marx (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 1988),
pp. 371376.
14
SETI: The NASA Years
several more years.
26
I insisted that we include in our NASA budget a Program
Plan line item for R&D of future SETI telescopes, searches, and systems at
one-tenth of the budget. Although approved at the time, this line item was
unfortunately to disappear later in a funding crunch.
SETI at Large
I shall now depart from the chronological history of SETI at NASA to dis-
cuss general issues that emerged over the years. Although the NASA pro-
gram was by far the largest, SETI had gradually appeared in many other
places. Drake had carried out his own searches and had sponsored others at
Arecibo. Begun in 1973, the observational project at the Ohio State radio
telescope, under the direction of John Kraus and Robert Dixon, had become
by 1995 the longest-running full-scale SETI project in the United States. In
the early 1990s, Dixon had started the imaginative Project Argus, a wide-sky,
broad-frequency, low-sensitivity search with small telescopes. Paul Horowitz
developed extremely narrow-channel (.05 hertz) instruments for the Harvard
radio telescope, beginning with Project Sentinel in 1983, then progressing to
METAthe Megachannel Extraterrestrial Assayand fnally to the current
BETA, with a billion channels. Stuart Bowyer and Dan Werthimer at UC
Berkeley have been running Project SERENDIP as a piggyback operation
on radio-astronomy projects at Arecibo since 1980.
Outside the United States, SETI projects were carried out in France,
Argentina, Italy, Germany, and Japan. Tese programs and others came to
a total of 61 searches worldwide.
27
It should be noted that collectively all of
these searches had examined only a minute fraction of astronomical multi-
dimensional time search space. In 1991, SETI was still in its infancy. On the
26. See E. F. Mallove, R. L. Forward, Z. Paprotny, and J. Lehmann, Interstellar Travel and
Communication A Bibliography, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 33 (1980):
201248; Z. Paprotny and J. Lehmann, Interstellar Travel and Communication Bibliography:
1982 Update, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 36 (1983): 311329; Z. Paprotny,
J. Lehmann, and J. Prytz: Interstellar Travel and Communication Bibliography: 1984 Update,
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 37 (1984):502512, 1984; and Z. Paprotny, J.
Lehmann, and J. Prytz: Interstellar Travel and Communication Bibliography: 1985 Update,
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 39 (1986):127136.
27. Jill Tarter and Michael J. Klein, SETI: On the Telescope and on the Drawing Board, in
Bioastronomy: The Search for Extraterrestrial LifeThe Exploration Broadens, ed. Jean
Heidmann and Michael J. Klein (New York: Springer, 1991), pp. 229235.
15
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
other hand, a real signal might have been detected at any time by any SETI
observing project anywhere on Earth.
It had always been our policy to provide, where we could, some level of
fnancial support for these other SETI activities, and we did just that over
the years. Another policy was to aim for the highest professional standards
in the science and engineering of SETI. To this end, we always engaged with
the scientifc and engineering communities and made sure that we had a
continuing presence at national and international professional conferences,
delivering papers and then submitting them to appropriate peer-reviewed
journals. Review sessions on SETI have been held at the annual International
Astronautical Congress (IAC) since 1972. I was Chairman of the IAA SETI
Committee from 1977 to 1994. Every four or fve years, we would collect
the best papers read at the congresses, have them peer reviewed, and publish
them as a special issue of Acta Astronautica.
28
Te International Astronomical
Union (IAU) established a new commission (designated Commission 51) on
bioastronomy in 1984, which since then has held scientifc meetings trienni-
ally. Both Frank Drake and Jill Tarter served as presidents of this commission
in the late 1980s.
It had always been apparent to us that the unequivocal discovery of a
signal of extraterrestrial intelligent origin would have profound consequences
for humankind. Since this was obviously a transnational issue, we brought it
up periodically in the IAA SETI Committee and also with colleagues in the
International Institute of Space Law. We devised a Declaration of Principles
Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence
and called it, somewhat loosely, the SETI Post-Detection Protocols.
29
Tis
list of nine recommendations to SETI investigators, adopted by the IAA in
1989, was endorsed by six major international space societies and, later, by
nearly all SETI investigators around the world. In the following years, the
Committee worked on a second protocol, which examined questions dealing
with the transmission of messages from Earth to extraterrestrial civilizations
and recommended that these questions be forwarded to the United Nations
Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) for consideration.
Te basic issues were whether to transmit, either de novo or after the detection of
28. The SETI special issues of Acta Astronautica include vol. 6, nos. 12 (1979); vol. 13, no. 1 (1986); vol.
19, no. 11 (1989); vol. 21, no. 2 (1990); vol. 26, nos. 34 (1992); and vol. 42, nos. 1012 (1998).
29. The full text of this declaration is available on the International Academy of Astronautics SETI
Permanent Committee Web site at http://www.setileague.org/iaaseti/protdet.htm (accessed 25
June 2013). See also Jill Tarter and Michael A. Michaud, eds., SETI Post-Detection Protocol,
Acta Astronautica 21, no. 2 (1990): 69154.
16
SETI: The NASA Years
a signal; what the content of a message might be if transmissions were sent; and
how these decisions were to be made. Our document, titled Draft Declaration
of Principles Concerning Sending Communications with Extraterrestrial
Intelligence and submitted to the IAA in 1995, became a formal Position Paper
of the Academy and was endorsed by the International Institute of Space Law.
30

It has now been formally received by COPUOS.
In 1987 at the International Astronautical Federations 38th Congress,
held in Brighton, England, Dr. James Fletcher, then Administrator of NASA,
presented a paper on what he imagined his successor might say about space
achievements 30 years into the future. In it, he pronounced that the discovery
of extraterrestrial intelligence would eclipse all other discoveries in history.
It had been obvious to us since Project Ozma that many questions related
to the societal implications of SETI had not yet been addressed. So I asked the
distinguished social psychologist Roger Heyns, then director of the Hewlett
Foundation and former chancellor of UC Berkeley, to co-chair with me a
series of Workshops on the Cultural Aspects of SETI (CASETI). We gathered
together a team of specialists in history; theology; anthropology; psychology;
sociology; international law, relations, and policy; political science; the media;
and education. We met three times in 1991 and 1992 and generated a report
titled Social Implications of the Detection of an Extraterrestrial Civilization.
31

Te report concluded that the issues were important and merited extensive
further studies.
1988: The Buildup Begins
In 1988 we saw the signing of the Project Initiation Agreement by NASA,
another major step in the bureaucratic approval process. Lynn Grifths had
replaced Don DeVincenzi as Program Manager at NASA Headquarters, and
John Rummel became the Headquarters Project Scientist. Funding was now
30. The full texts of both the draft and the revision of this position paper are accessible in the
Protocols section of the International Academy of Astronautics SETI Permanent Committee
Web site: http://www.setileague.org/iaaseti/protocol.htm (accessed 25 June 2013). It is also
available on the SETI Institute Web site at http://www.seti.org.
31. John Billingham et al., eds., Social Implications of the Detection of an Extraterrestrial Civilization:
A Report of the Workshops on the Cultural Aspects of SETI Held in October 1991, May 1992, and
September 1992 at Santa Cruz, California (Mountain View, CA: SETI Press, 1990). The Executive
Summary, Principal Findings, and Recommendations can be found at http://www.seti.org/seti-
institute/project/details/cultural-aspects-seti (accessed 25 June 2013).
17
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
running at just under $3 million a year. At Ames, there was another reor-
ganization, and in 1989 I became the full-time chief of the SETI Ofce,
with Barney Oliver at my side as deputy. My frst action was to appoint Jill
Tarter as our Project Scientist. Te SETI Institute, under Drake and Pierson,
was playing an increasingly important role.
32
We were completing the R&D
phase. Program reviews intensifed at the Centers and in Washington. In
1990, SETI took on the status of an approved NASA project, and we began
the Final Development and Operations phase. Te budget for 1990 was $6
million. Te fnal Project Plan outlined a 10-year search at a total cost of
$108 million. We had 140 people working on SETI at Ames and JPL. Te
search was scheduled to begin on 12 October 1992, the 500th anniversary
of Columbuss arrival in America. And so it did.
33
Speaking of Columbus reminds me that attempts of one sort or another
were always being made to reduce our budget. We had constantly to be on
guard. We continued to see sniping from individual members of Congress,
though also much support. Some in the astronomical community saw SETI
as a potential competitor for funding. A frequent question was Why dont
you delay this project until the cost of digital signal processing has come down
to a fraction of what it is today?to which Oliver replied, Columbus didnt
wait for jets. We actually had another strong argument for not delaying and
were able to use it efectively. If we did not get on the air soon, the difculty
of detecting faint signals from other civilizations would increase because of
the growing saturation of the radio-frequency spectrum with interference,
which in turn would cost progressively more millions of dollars to overcome.
In 1991 the National Research Council published its Astronomy Survey
Committee Report for the 1990s and again recommended SETI. In that
same year we began building and testing the actual search systems. Tarter and
Gulkis fnalized the observational plans, advised by an Investigators Working
Group of scientists. Te 1991 budget rose to $16.8 million. Te targeted
search was to be conducted at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico (the
plans having been approved by a National Science Foundation peer-review
process), and the sky survey would be performed using one of the Deep Space
32. Thomas Pierson, SETI Institute: Summary of Projects in Support of SETI Research, in
Progress in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, ASP Conference Series, vol. 74, ed. G. Seth
Shostak (San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacic, 1995), pp. 433444.
33. For a detailed description of SETI at this time, including science rationale, observational plans,
and signal-detection system designs, see John Billingham and Jill Tarter, Fundamentals of
Space Biology and Medicine, in SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Washington,
DC: AIAA; Moscow: Nauka Press, 1993).
18
SETI: The NASA Years
Network telescopes at Goldstone in the Mojave desert. I tried at this time to
have Michel Klein formally named as Deputy of the NASA SETI Program,
but Headquarters said it could not be done. We needed a full-time overall
project manager and brought on David Brocker from the Space Science
Division at Ames. Reporting to him were Larry Webster, Targeted Search
Manager at Ames, and Mike Klein, Sky Survey Manager at JPL. Te able Gary
Coulter had by this time become Program Manager at NASA Headquarters,
replacing the able Lynn Grifths.
In 1992 the name Microwave Observing Project was changed to High-
Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS) by order of the U.S. Congress. Te
project was moved from the NASA Headquarters Life Sciences Division to
the Solar System Exploration Division, along with Coulter and Rummel. Te
1992 budget rose again, to $17.5 million. Te signal-detection systems were
shipped to the telescopes for fnal testing. Te Ames system was built into
a Mobile Research Facilitya trailerthat was trucked to Travis Air Force
Base, loaded onto a C-141 transport, fown to Puerto Rico, trucked again
to the Arecibo Observatory, and hooked up to the telescope. Te basic idea
behind the Mobile Research Facility was to be able to take the targeted search
to any large telescope anywhere in the world. At the same time, scientists
and engineers at JPL assembled and tested their sky-survey instrumentation
at Goldstone. Preparations were made for the inauguration of the search.
A series of talks were to be given by distinguished people. Invitations went
out to them and to the media, and the activity level rose to a crescendo. Te
brunt of the organization fell on Vera Buescher, who did a wonderful job.
We were very busy.
1992: NASA SETI Comes of Age
It was noon on Columbus Day, 1992, at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto
Rico. After a morning of inauguration speeches, including a rousing one from
Frank Drake, David Brocker formally initiated the NASA High-Resolution
Microwave Survey and pulled the switch to turn on the targeted search system.
In a two-way hook-up with the JPL team at Goldstone, where a correspond-
ing inauguration ceremony was underway, Mike Klein did the same for the
sky survey. As I said in my briefng to the audience, these new systems were
so powerful that they would eclipse the sum of all previous searches within
the frst few minutes of operation. And so it was.
Both teams spent the next year exploring the sky for signals of extraterres-
trial intelligent origin and learning how to deal with the vast fows of data that
were analyzed in near real-time. Procedures were worked out for dealing with
19
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
the chronic radio-frequency interference. Teams of observers and engineers
rotated back and forth between the NASA Centers and the observatories.
Te targeted search completed 200 hours of observations of selected nearby
F, G, and K stars. Te sky survey conducted observations at X-band and
completed a sequence of maps of the galactic plane, primarily at L-band. In
August 1993, Jill Tarter and Mike Klein presented a summary of their results
at a Bioastronomy Symposium in Santa Cruz, California. Tey said:
At both sites the equipment has functioned well, with minor,
mostly low-tech glitches. Tese initial observations have verifed
the transport logistics for the Targeted Search and provided the
frst platform for remote observations to the Sky Survey. As a
result of the data that have been collected, modifcations have
been made or planned to the hardware, software, and observing
protocols. Both observing programs have encountered signals
that required additional observations because they initially con-
formed to the detection pattern expected for an extraterrestrial
signal, but no signals persist as potential candidates at this time.
Tis paper will discuss the lessons we have learned, the changes
we are making, and our schedule for continued observation.
34
Alas, there was to be no continued observation.
The Dissolution of SETI at NASA
Shortly after the Santa Cruz meeting, Senator Richard Bryan (D-NV) intro-
duced an amendment to the 1993 NASA budget eliminating the HRMS
program. His argument was based on defcit reduction, and he explained
that 150 new houses could be built in Nevada for the same cost. In spite
of a vigorous defense of HRMS by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and
others, the motion was carried. Te political complexities of all the issues
are covered in detail in the next chapter of this book, A Political History of
NASAs SETI Program.
I now had the unhappy task, for the second time, of putting together a
termination plan. Slowly and surely, all the grants and contracts had to be
wound down and our team dissolved. It took six months. Te total budget
34. Jill Tarter and Michael J. Klein, HRMS: Where Weve Been, and Where Were Going, in
Shostak, ed., Progress in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, pp. 457469, esp. p. 457.
20
SETI: The NASA Years
for SETI, over all the years, was just under $78 million. In March of 1994
the doors were closed on SETI at NASA.
Epilogue
We had successfully executed Earths frst comprehensive Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence. We suspect there have been, still are, and will be
searches by other intelligent species in the universe. Perhaps some of these
searches have been successful, and perhaps communication now exists between
these extraterrestrial societies. One day we may join that conversation.
Te targeted search was taken over by the SETI Institute in 1994 and
continued with funding from private sources. Te following year Project
Argus, a new all-sky survey (also privately funded), was initiated by the non-
proft SETI League, on whose advisory board Frank Drake serves. So Frank
Drake, who began it all, continues to hold the torch in his hands. In the year
2014, he still does.
21
CHAPTER TWO
A Political History of
NASAs SETI Program
1
Stephen J. Garber
Humans have always had a curiosity about whether we are unique or
whether other intelligent life-forms exist elsewhere in the universe. In 1959
a group of astrophysicists formulated a new approach to answering this
question which involved using radio astronomy to listen for signs of
extraterrestrial intelligent life. Sixteen years later, in 1975, NASA began
to fund defnition studies for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(SETI) program. After progressing at a low level of funding for more than
a decade, the program was renamed the High-Resolution Microwave Survey
(HRMS) and, on Columbus Day, 1992, launched what was intended to
be a 10-year, $100-million formal SETI efort. Within a year, Congress
abruptly can celed the HRMS program, though aspects of it were continued
with private funding.
Why did the NASA SETI/HRMS programhereafter referred to simply
as the SETI programfail? While debate over the likelihood of fnding
intelligent extraterrestrial life goes on, most scientists agree that the SETI
program constituted worthwhile, valid scientifc research. A number of
political factors, however, combined to kill the program. Anxiety over the
federal budget defcit, lack of support from some segments of the scientifc
and aerospace communities, and unfounded but persistent claims that linked
SETI with nonscientifc elements all made the program an easy target in
the autumn of 1993.
1. First, thank you to Doug Vakoch for suggesting the revision and updating of my prior article
on this subject. Thanks also go to the editorial staff of the Journal of the British Interplanetary
Society, both for publishing an earlier version of this research under the title Searching for
Good Science: The Cancellation of NASAs SETI Program (JBIS 52, no. 1 [1999]: 312) and
for allowing me to revise that text for this collection.
23
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Searching for Signs of Extraterrestrial Intelligence
A Brief History
Long before the space age, scientists and engineers pondered ways to answer
the question Are we alone? In the early 20th century, radio pioneers such as
Heinrich Hertz, Nikola Tesla, and Guglielmo Marconi foresaw the possibility
of using radio waves for interplanetary communication, as it was called at
the time. In 1919, after observing some unusual radio signals, Marconi tried
to determine whether they came from Mars, causing a considerable public
stir. Elmer Sperry, head of the Sperry Gyroscope Company, proposed using
a massive array of searchlights to send a beacon to Mars, and even Albert
Einstein suggested that light rays might be an easily controllable method for
extraterrestrial communication.
2

Te age-old question of whether intelligent life exists beyond Earth
reached a turning point in 1959. Tat year, Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip
Morrison published a seminal paper in which they suggested that the micro-
wave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum would be ideal for commu-
nicating signals across tremendous distances in our galaxy.
3
A narrowband
frequency could, they theorized, be beamed long distances with relatively
minimal power and signal interference. Radio waves travel at the speed of
light and are not absorbed by cosmic dust or clouds. Tus, if scientists tuned
radio telescopes to the right portion of the spectrum, they might be able to
detect a pattern of radio waves that indicated extraterrestrial intelligence.
Our own radio and television broadcasts had been drifting into space for a
number of years already. While we might pick up such unintentional extrater-
restrial signals, Cocconi and Morrison primarily hoped to receive a message
deliberately sent by other intelligent beings.
Independently of Cocconi and Morrison, a young astronomer named
Frank Drake had also been contemplating radio astronomy as a means of
searching for extraterrestrial signals. He decided to test this approach in 1960
by setting up a rudimentary experiment, which he called Project Ozma, at the
Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. While listening over a two-month
period to emissions from two nearby stars, Drake was startled to discover a
nonrandom signal pattern that potentially indicated ETI. After checking his
results, however, he realized that the pattern was a terrestrial one, generated
2. Steven J. Dick, Back to the Future: SETI Before the Space Age, The Planetary Report 15, no.
1 (1995): 47.
3. Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison, Searching for Interstellar Communications, Nature
184, no. 4690 (1959): 844846.
24
A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
by a secret military radar. Undeterred, Drake persevered with Project Ozma
and went on to become one of the leading fgures in the SETI feld.
Te microwave portion of the spectrum seemed to be the logical place
to look for extraterrestrial signals, but this still left a broad range of other
frequencies. Drake, as well as Cocconi and Morrison, speculated that the
optimum wave frequency would be near the spectral emission frequency of
hydrogen, the most common element in our galaxy. Soon afterward, scientists
adopted a strategy of looking in the water hole portion of the spectrum
between the emission lines of hydrogen and hydroxyl, the chemical compo-
nents of water, since water is assumed to be essential for life.
4

In 1961, Drake gathered a small group of astronomers and other scientists
at Green Bank for the frst scientifc SETI conference. Tese ten attendees
later called themselves members of the Order of the Dolphin, alluding to
a discussion they had had about the dolphins intellectual capabilities and
the evolutionary likelihood of intelligent life. In trying to come up with an
agenda for this meeting, Drake produced what became known as the Drake
Equation, a formula that estimates the number of potential intelligent civi-
lizations in our galaxy. Te equation reads
N = R* f
p
n
e
f
l
f
i
f
c
L,
where N is the number of detectable civilizations in space and the seven other
symbols represent various factors multiplied by each other.
5
Drake himself calculated N to be approximately 10,000. Tis fgure takes
into account just the Milky Way galaxy, one of billions and billions of gal-
axies in the universe.
6
As later critics pointed out, scientists have hard data
on only one of these variables; the rest continue to be just rough estimates.
4. See, for example, Seth Shostak, Listening for Life, Astronomy 20, no. 10 (1992): 2633,
esp. p. 30; and Frank Drake and Dava Sobel, Is Anyone Out There? The Scientic Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (New York: Delacorte Press, 1992), pp. 4243.
5. Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, p. 52. For a discussion of how the Drake Equation has
changed slightly over the years, see Steven J. Dick, The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-
Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), pp. 428 and 441442. Linda Billings contends that this formula would
be better termed the Drake Heuristic because it is a way to think about how many intelligent
civilizations may exist, rather than a mathematical calculation per se; see http://lindabillings.
org/gady_blog/LindaBillings.org/Capital_Gady/Entries/2009/12/10_The_Drake_Heuristic__
Its_Not_Math.html (accessed 26 April 2013).
6. Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, p. xv.
25
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Nevertheless, Drake devised the equation simply as a starting point for how
to think about searching for extraterrestrial signals.
In the late 1960s, John Billingham, who worked at NASAs Ames Research
Center (ARC), began a campaign to get NASA involved in SETI. Billingham
had been trained as a medical doctor and had previously done biomedical
and life sciences work for NASA, such as designing the liquid-cooled inner
garment for the Apollo spacesuits. In 1971, Billingham and Bernard (Barney)
Oliver, a former vice president of research at Hewlett-Packard Corporation
with a long-standing interest in SETI, authored a detailed NASA study pro-
posing an array of one thousand 100-meter telescope dishes that could pick
up radio signals from neighboring stars.
7
Project Cyclops, as it was called, was
never adopted, in large measure because of its tremendous $10-billion price
tag. An especially unfortunate result of the study was the creation of a wide-
spread misperception that the Cyclops Project required an all-or-nothing
approach, and thus SETI got nothing for several years.
8

Four years after this setback, NASA managers judged that the relevant sci-
ence and technology had matured enough to merit additional investigation.
Tus, in 1975, NASA began to fund design studies under the leadership of
MITs Philip Morrison, who had coauthored the seminal Nature paper in
1959. Te next year, managers at NASAs Ames Research Center established
a SETI branch, and scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL) also started SETI work. Ames had experience in biomedical research,
while JPL had experience tracking deep space missions and easy access to the
Deep Space Network antenna for radio astronomy at Goldstone.
Te programs troubles in Congress trace back to 1978. Tat year, while
SETI at NASA was still receiving a relatively low level of federal funding,
9

Senator William Proxmire bestowed one of his infamous Golden Fleece
awards on the program, deriding it as a waste of taxpayer money. In 1981,
viewing the SETI program as a foolish enterprise that was unlikely to yield
results, Proxmire sponsored an amendment that killed its funding for the
next year.
At this point, Proxmire was approached by the famous astronomer
Carl Sagan, who had previously dealt with him on nuclear winter issues.
7. Bernard M. Oliver and John Billingham, Project Cyclops: A Design Study of a System for
Detecting Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life (Washington, DC: NASA CR-114445, 1971).
8.

Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, p. 139.
9. For an overview of SETIs funding history, see the appendix to this chapter on p. 48. This
budget data was supplied by Mr. Jens Feeley, Policy Analyst, NASA Ofce of Space Science,
NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
26
A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
Sagan was able to convince him of the programs scientifc merits. Proxmire
agreed not to oppose SETI, and Congress reinstated funding for fscal year
1983 (FY83).
While NASAs SETI program was developing during the 1980s, several
privately funded SETI projects were also under way. Te Planetary Society,
which Sagan had helped to found, provided support for two JPL researchers
to conduct SETI observations at a NASA tracking station in Australia. Te
society also partially funded Paul Horowitz, a Harvard University astronomer
who used surplus antennae and computers to build a portable system called
Suitcase SETI, which he later transformed into Project Sentinel and then
into the Megachannel Extraterrestrial Assay. Various other projects included the
Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent
Populations (SERENDIP), conducted at the University of California at
Berkeley, and Ohio State Universitys Big Ear program, which ran from 1973
to 1995. In 1984, the nonproft SETI Institute was founded in California.
Scientists outside the United States, particularly those in the Soviet Union,
were also interested in searching for ETI signals. International conferences
were held in 1971 and 1981 in Armenia and Estonia, due in part to the
interest of two leading Russian astrophysicists, Iosif Shklovskii and Nikolai
Kardashev. In 1965, Soviet astronomers had detected a signal with the appar-
ent hallmarks of ETI, but American scientists determined that it was the result
of a naturally occurring phenomenon called quasars. If they had not before,
SETI researchers worldwide quickly realized the importance of double-check-
ing their results with colleagues before making any grand pronouncements.
10

In 1988, NASA Headquarters formally endorsed the SETI program,
and technicians at Ames and JPL began to build the necessary hardware.
Simultaneously, the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA Headquarters
established a working group to form a strategy for fnding other planetary
systems. Tis led to the Towards Other Planetary Systems (TOPS) workshops
in 1990 and 1992.
By this time, SETI scientists were anxious to begin their search, not only
because the preliminary studies had taken many years but also because of a
purely technical reason: an increasingly crowded radio spectrum. New com-
mercial communications satellites threatened to create a signifcant noise
problem in the same part of the spectrum where SETI scientists concurred
that chances were best to detect extraterrestrial signals. Tis cluttering was
10. For more information on Soviet SETI efforts, see, for example, Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out
There?, pp. 95115 and 155156.
27
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Figure 2.1. High-Resolution Microwave
Survey observations begin on 12
October 1992. (Photo: Seth Shostak)
likely to worsen, so there was an impetus to
start full-fedged listening quickly.
While the SETI program had always
sufered from a giggle factor that derived
from its association in the popular press with
searches for little green men and unidenti-
fed fying objects (UFOs), the congressional
pressures intensifed in 1990. Te George
H. W. Bush administration requested $12
million for the program in FY91, up from
$4.2 million in FY90, to start a full-fedged
Microwave Observing Project (MOP).
Congressman Ronald Machtley (R-RI)
declared, We cannot spend money on
curiosity today when we have a defcit.
11

Silvio Conte (R-MA) stated that he didnt
want to spend millions of dollars to fnd evi-
dence of ETI when one could spend 75 cents to buy a tabloid [with reports
of aliens] at the local supermarket.
12
Perhaps the program was lucky to end
up with $11.5 million for FY91.
In response to continued political pressure, NASA slightly restructured
the program and prepared to start its next SETI efort precisely 500 years
after Columbus had discovered North America (see Figures 2.1, 2.2, and
2.3). In addition to changing the name from Microwave Observing Project
to High-Resolution Microwave Survey, NASA moved HRMS from the Life
Sciences Division to its Solar System Exploration Division and made it part
of the TOPS program. Te House and Senate science committees, as well
as the House Appropriations Committee, tried to cancel the program, but
it was saved by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, in part due to the
eforts of Senator Jake Garn (R-UT), who had fown on the Space Shuttle in
1985 and waxed eloquent about his religious convictions in relation to ETI.
13
11. For these and other program budget gures, see the appendix on p. 48. Congressman
Machtley is here quoted from Louis D. Friedman, World Watch, The Planetary Report 10, no.
3 (1990): 2425, esp. p. 24.
12. Friedman, World Watch, p. 24.
13. Richard A. Kerr, SETI Faces Uncertainty on Earth and in the Stars, Science 258, no. 5079
(1992): 27; Kevin Kelly, telephone conversation with author, 2 July 1997; and William Triplett,
SETI Takes the Hill, Air & Space (October/November 1992): 8086, esp. p. 83.
28
A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
Figure 2.2. The Arecibo radio telescope, 12 October 1992. (Photo: Seth Shostak)
Despite this shaky footing, HRMS was allocated $12 million for FY93 as
part of a 10-year, $100-million program that included two main components:
a targeted search and an all-sky survey. NASA Ames managed the targeted
search component, which was conducted with the radio telescope in Arecibo,
Puerto Rico, and was meant to focus on emissions from those nearby stars that
scientists viewed as most promising for ETI signals. JPL scientists managed
the all-sky survey, which used the Deep Space Network dish at Goldstone to
scan the entire Milky Way.
After almost a year of HRMS operations, the program hit a political wall
when a prominent opponent sensed an opportune time to strike. On 22
September 1993, Senator Richard Bryan (D-NV), a noted SETI critic, ofered
a last-minute amendment to kill the program, and the full Senate concurred. A
House-Senate conference committee approved the Senate plan, which included
$1 million for program termination costs. Bryan issued a press release saying,
Tis hopefully will be the end of Martian-hunting season at the taxpayers
expense.
14
Seemingly out of nowhere, NASAs SETI eforts were dead.
14. See, for example, Debra Polsky, Team Scrambles To Find New Funds for HRMS, Space News
(1824 October 1993): 27; and Steven J. Dick, The Biological Universe, p. 469.
29
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Figure 2.3. Bernard Oliver speaks at ceremonies marking the start of the HRMS program in Arecibo,
Puerto Rico, on 12 October 1992, with (left to right) John Billingham, an unidentied Puerto Rican
ofcial, Oliver, and John Rummel. (Photo: Seth Shostak)
While greatly disappointed, program personnel moved quickly and with
resolve to continue SETI with private funding. Barney Oliver led a successful
campaign to raise money from several wealthy Californians in Silicon Valley,
whom he knew from his days at Hewlett-Packard. A number of scientists
involved with the project moved over to the nonproft SETI Institute, which
had acted as a NASA contractor. Te SETI Institute raised $7.5 million to
cover costs of operating a targeted search through June 1995 and began
the appropriately titled Project Phoenix, which lasted through 2004.
15
Te
all-sky survey was discontinued, as was the 10-year HRMS plan, and was
replaced by the less-comprehensive observations that the SETI Institute
could make contingent upon the vagaries of continued private fund-raising.
Te cancellation of NASAs SETI program did not end all research in this
area (see the Postscript section below), but it signifcantly limited what
researchers could accomplish.
15. Tom Pierson, e-mail to the author, 13 June 1997.
30
A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
The Science of SETI
How did other scientists view SETI? A 1991 National Academy of Sciences
(NAS) working paper by the Radio Astronomy Panel concluded that even
though SETI was not exclusively a radio astronomy program, it contained
exciting, valid science. Te panel therefore recommended establishing a
complementary university-based research program to help NASA develop
search algorithms and signal processors.
16
A previous NAS study in 1982 had
likewise concluded that SETI was a worthwhile scientifc program.
17
In 1982,
the journal Science published a petition put together by Sagan and signed by
70 eminent scientists, including biologists and biochemists such as Stephen
Jay Gould, David Baltimore, and Linus Pauling.
18

When the discussion stayed on a scientifc level, the SETI program was
viewed favorably in large measure because those scientists who thought about
such matters had reached a strong consensus years earlier about how, where,
and when to search for signals. Furthermore, their reasoning was relatively
transparent both to scientists from other disciplines and to the general public.
Sagan even explained the SETI game plan in an article that made the cover of
Parade magazine.
19
SETI scientists agreed that a narrowband signal in the radio
portion of the microwave spectrum provided the greatest return on invest-
ment in terms of traveling farthest with a minimum of power. Narrowing
searches down to the water-hole region also made common sense. While
other search methods might eventually be developed, in the late 1980s and
early 1990s, SETI scientists were eager to start searching in earnest because
the formerly quiet microwave spectrum was quickly becoming jammed with
the noise of new commercial communications satellites. In short, no major
scientifc organization seriously disputed SETIs scientifc approach.
Still, scientifc skeptics tried to exploit the lack of any solid quantitative
calculations about the probable existence of an intelligent civilization else-
where in the cosmos. Even if intelligent life existed, what was the likelihood
16. Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee, Working Papers: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Panel Reports (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1991), pp. 113.
17. Astronomy Survey Committee, Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1980s. Volume 1: Report
of the Astronomy Survey Committee (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1982).
18. Carl Sagan, Extraterrestrial Intelligence: An International Petition, Science 218, no. 4571
(1982): 426. See also Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, Appendix C, pp. 259265.
19. Carl Sagan, Scanning the Sky for Alien Civilizations: The Search for Signals from Space,
Parade (19 September 1993): 1, 46. Ironically, this article was published just a few days
before Congress passed Senator Bryans amendment canceling SETI funding.
31
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
that these beings could beam a message to us that we could not only receive
but understand? If we on Earth were just guessing at these probabilities, or
the probabilities were infnitesimal, why bother looking at all?
Ernst Mayr, an eminent biologist who believed that the evolution of
intelligent life on Earth was the result of incredibly long odds, cast asper-
sions on the idea of searching for ETI signals. Mayr went through the Drake
Equation and assigned probabilities to the seven conditions expressed by the
individual variables. He believed that only two such conditions were at all
likely to obtain: that extraterrestrial life is able to originate repeatedly and
that habitable exoplanets similar to Earth exist. All the other conditions
he rated as improbable, with the exception of extraterrestrial life adapting
toward higher intelligence, which he rated as highly improbable. A staunch
supporter of Darwinian evolution, Mayr noted that life on Earth originated
3.8 billion years ago, while intelligent life on Earth developed only about half
a million years ago. If the evolutionary soup had been a few degrees hotter
or colder at any one point, we would not be here at all, according to Mayr.
Even if ETI did develop, Mayr argued, then a particular intelligent civiliza-
tion probably would not have the ability to communicate through space.
He reasoned that there have been dozens of distinct civilizations on Earth
(Greek, Maya, etc.) over the past 10,000 years, yet just one has achieved this
technological capability.
20
Put another way, Mayr argued that since life frst appeared on Earth,
approximately 50 billion species have evolved, but only one has developed
technology: If intelligence has such high survival value, he asked, then
why dont we see more species develop it?
21
Back in 1961, however, the
members of the Order of the Dolphin had concluded that intelligence did
indeed have a high survival value, as shown by the behavior of species such
as dolphins.
22
While dolphins presumably are not interested in astronomy,
there is another variable, f
c
, in the Drake Equation to calculate the fraction
of intelligent species who develop the technological means for interstellar
communication. Mayr overlooked this variable and attacked SETI, calling
it hopeless and a waste of time, and saying, We have to deal with reali-
tiesnot pipe dreams.
23

20. Ernst Mayr and Carl Sagan, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Scientic Quest or
Hopeful Folly?, The Planetary Report 16, no. 4 (1996): 413.
21. Erik Skindrud, The Big Question: Giant Ears Await Alien Broadcasts, Science News 150, no.
107 (September 1996): 152155, esp. p. 153.
22. Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, p. 59.
23. Mayr, quoted in Skindrud, The Big Question, p. 152.
32
A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
Sagan responded to these comments by allowing that the probability of
ETI may be low, but he quoted his 1982 Science petition: No a priori argu-
ments on this subject can be compelling or should be used as a substitute
for an observational program.
24
Sagan also rebuked Mayr for suggesting
that biologists know better, noting that because the relevant technologies
involve the physical sciences, it is reasonable that astronomers, physicists and
engineers play a leading role in SETI.
25
Actually, as this article points out,
Sagan had advanced training in biology, having served as a research assistant
in the laboratory of the Nobel Prizewinning geneticist Hermann J. Muller.
26

Mayr turned this argument around by claiming that even though the
existence of ETI cannot be established by a priori arguments, this does not
justify SETI projects, since it can be shown that the success of an observa-
tional program is so totally improbable that it can, for all practical purposes,
be considered zero.
27
Similarly, in the fall of 1993, congressional critics such
as Senator Bryan noted that, despite almost one full year of HRMS operation
and almost two decades of NASA support, SETI had failed to fnd any little
green men. While the HRMS operation had found no ETI signals after
scanning only a small fraction of the sky, this program had been planned as a
10-year efort, and even a decade might not be long enough to fnd a signal.
Sagan argued that Mayrs, and hence Bryans, line of thinking was the closed-
minded equivalent of believing that Earth is at the center of the universe.
Ultimately, however, Sagan noted that arguments over the relative probability
of receiving an ETI signal are specious, since we cant know whether there are
any signals unless we seriously look for them.
28

Another line of reasoning suggests that instead of looking for ETI signals,
we may as well sit back and wait for a more advanced extraterrestrial civiliza-
tion to visit us. After the Manhattan Project scientists developed the atomic
bomb, Enrico Fermi is reported to have asked, Where are they? By this,
Fermi meant that surely we werent the only ones to have developed nuclear
technology, so why hadnt other extraterrestrial civilizations left traces of their
existence? Because our Sun is a medium-age star, SETI researchers believe
that if another ETI civilization exists, it stands a good chance of having been
24. Mayr and Sagan, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, p. 10.
25. Mayr and Sagan, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, p. 10.
26. Mayr and Sagan, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, p. 5; the byline for Sagan notes
that He is one of the few astronomers with a background in biology and mentions his work-
ing for Muller.
27. Mayr and Sagan, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, p. 11.
28. Mayr and Sagan, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, p. 13.
33
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
around far longer than we have and thus of being more advanced technologi-
cally. Te Fermi paradox is premised in part on the notion that such advanced
ETI civilizations would naturally expand into and colonize space.
29

Yet perhaps other civilizations would colonize only planets near their
own but still very far from us. Barney Oliver, among others, refuted Fermis
paradox, arguing that even for a highly advanced civilization, interstellar
travel would be quite difcult because of its immense power requirements.
30

Perhaps they would not colonize at all for a variety of reasons, including the
relatively young state of their technologyjust as we have not yet colonized
space. John Ball, an astronomer at MIT, suggests another possibility, which
he dubbed the zoo hypothesis: that alien civilizations are simply content
to watch us from afar.
31

Whether or not distant civilizations could somehow travel to Earth, the
efciency of radio signals makes that form of indirect communication much
more likely. Beyond listening for intended signals, SETI scientists could con-
ceivably fnd extraterrestrial transmissions that werent meant for us, com-
parable to the radio and television signals that have been drifting into space
from Earth this past century. As Fermi himself realized, the Fermi paradox
may be interesting to contemplate, but it really ofers no evidence one way
or the other about the existence of ETI.
32

Skeptics James Trefl and Robert Rood, who try to calculate how long
colonization of the galaxy would take, take another cut at the problem. Trefl,
a physics professor at George Mason University, and Rood, an astronomy
professor at the University of Virginia, used the Drake Equation to calculate
the chances of other sentient life-forms in the galaxy at 3 percent. Trefl and
Rood believe that if we are now almost capable of building space colonies,
an extraterrestrial civilization would probably have done so long ago, due
to diminishing resources and crowding on their home planet. Tey theo-
rize that such colonization further and further into space would continue
exponentially through the generations. Tus, in 30 million years, the entire
galaxy would be colonized. Assuming the universe is billions of years old, this
29. For more on the Fermi paradox, see, for example, Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, pp.
130131 and 203.
30. Bernard Oliver, SETI: Galactic Colonization and Other Flights of Fancy, IEEE Potentials 13, no.
3 (1994): 5154. Drake makes similar calculations in Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?,
pp. 61, 119131.
31. John A. Ball, The Zoo Hypothesis, Icarus 19, no. 3 (1973): 347349. See also Skindrud, The
Big Question, p. 153.
32. Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, p. 203.
34
A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
would be a mere blip on the cosmic timeline.
33
So, again, where are they? For
the record, Sagan calculated the length of time it would take a civilization to
colonize the galaxy as 5 billion years.
34

Yet even cynics such as Trefl and Rood see value in ETI searches. Trefl
believes in the value of technological spin-ofs, while Rood heralds SETI as
a great intellectual adventure into our own origins.
35
Former Senate stafer
Kevin Kelly, a less-than-enthusiastic SETI program supporter, felt strongly
that the educational component alone, which could get children and their
parents excited about science, justifed NASAs SETI program.
36
In terms
of spin-ofs, the Federal Aviation Administration showed interest in adapt-
ing SETI frequency-analyzer technologies for air trafc control, while the
National Security Agency was curious to learn about new techniques for
eavesdropping and code-breaking.
37

While not vocal supporters of the SETI program, many other scientists felt
that a $10 million annual investment was probably worthwhile. For example,
Zen Faulks, a University of Victoria biologist, observed that
the incredible improbability of alien intelligence should be taken
into account when deciding how much of our efort SETI should
occupy, but I would be disheartened to see the search stopped.
Te fallout for all the sciences, especially the biological sciences,
would be so gargantuan if we did contact an alien intelligence
that it seems foolish to abandon the entire afair.
38
At bottom, it could be argued that some of what scientists investigate is
based on fundamental beliefs, hunches, or faith that the world works in some
logical way. Deciding what is logical when we have little information may be
a leap of faith. Tus, Rood has made the interesting argument that most of
33. Triplett, SETI Takes the Hill, p. 84.
34. Lee Dye, NASA Holds Its Breath and Listens for Other Worlds, Los Angeles Times/Washington
Edition (7 October 1992), available online at http://articles.latimes.com/1992-10-07/news/
mn-425_1_radio-astronomy. This article also notes that Tulane University mathematician
Frank Tipler agrees with Trel and Roods gure of 30 million years.
35. Triplett, SETI Takes the Hill, p. 84.
36. Triplett, SETI Takes the Hill, p. 85.
37. Triplett, SETI Takes the Hill, p. 85.
38. Zen Faulks, Getting Smart About Getting Smarts, Skeptical Inquirer 15, no. 3 (1991):
263268; quoted in Donald E. Tarter, Treading on the Edge: Practicing Safe Science with
SETI, Skeptical Inquirer 17, no. 3 (1993): 288296, esp. pp. 289290.
35
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
those who believe in extraterrestrial life may do so because of a psychological
need to believe in it.
39
Even if true, this proposition should in no way taint
the search for ETI; and no responsible scientist has yet claimed to have found
any, just that it is worth looking. Interestingly, Rood has gone on to conduct
SETI research himself in the belief that, while a discovery is unlikely, it is
still worth searching, since theorizing cant prove or disprove its existence.
40
Moreover, SETI researchers fully comprehend and appreciate the need
to double- and triple-check any potential signals from ETI in case a simpler
phenomenon, whether terrestrial or nonterrestrial, could explain them. In
addition to this application of the standard scientifc principle of Occams
Razor to examine the simplest or most likely explanation frst, an interna-
tionally adopted contact protocol calls for data about a potential ETI signal
to be widely publicized and distributed so that other scientists may scrutinize
and validate it.
41

Even though SETI scientists are wary of publicizing a strange signal too
soon for fear of crying wolf, the scientifc logic is simple: phenomena that
cannot be attributed to conventional terrestrial or cosmic sources merit fur-
ther investigation. As longtime SETI scientist Jill Tarter has said, Its not a
matter of being able to defne what identifes intelligence. What constitutes
credible evidence is being unable to explain a signalwhich you also cant
make go awayby any known astrophysics or technology.
42
Again, SETI
researchers have long been aware of the perils of debating their program at
the little green men level and have adhered closely to traditional scientifc
methods of inquiry.
In addition, many SETI researchers caution that they may not discover an
ETI signal anytime soon. Although those such as Drake continue to be very
optimistic, simultaneously most researchers know that, by its very nature, the
length of a comprehensive search is very hard to predict. Signal processing
and other computer technology has continued to change rapidly, NASAs
SETI program was a classic example of basic science generating observations
and results that would eventually pay of, but when and how was anyones
guess. Program scientists also noted that if a defnitive search produced no
signs of ETI, this negative result would in itself be very important. Although
HRMS certainly was not a defnitive search, it was tens of thousands of times
39. Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, p. 208.
40. Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, p. 208.
41. Tarter, Treading on the Edge, pp. 293295.
42. Jonathan Eberhart, Listening for ET: What if the Message Comes?, Science News 135, no.
19 (1989): 296298, esp. p. 297.
36
A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
more comprehensive than any previous eforts. Yet, as Jill Tarter has noted,
the program was in the unenviable position of having to petition Congress
for more funding on the basis of previous failures.
43
Unfortunately for SETI, even John Gibbons, President Clintons science
advisor, demonstrated a surprising misunderstanding of the nature of SETI.
In February 1994 he opined: Weve done a lot of observing and listening [for
alien signals] already, and if there were anything obviously out there, I think
we would have gotten some signal [by now].
44
Gibbons made these com-
ments after Congress had already canceled funding for SETI, so it is possible
he was posturing after the fact. Nevertheless, either nobody properly briefed
Gibbons, or he was never interested enough to learn anything about SETI.
It is also well known that few scientists or engineers serve in Congress.
One analysis of the membership of the 103rd Congress (19931995) by
a SETI scientist showed that it contained more former undertakers (four)
than former scientists (one) or engineers (three).
45
Te only former scientist,
Congressman, George Brown, Jr. (D-CA), viewed SETI as valid science.
46
The Political Story Behind the Congressional Cancellation
Te SETI program represents a unique case study. By all accounts, it was
properly managed, scientifcally valuable, and had a relatively small budget.
By contrast, the Superconducting Super Collider, which Congress also can-
celed at about the same time, was a multibillion-dollar program that was
controversial among physicists and sufered from signifcant mismanagement.
Agencies such as NASA or the National Science Foundation do not always
renew investigators grants, but why would Congress choose to dismantle a
low-cost research program that was already stafed and operational?
Ironically, the frst factor was SETIs size. At the height of the program,
it received $12.25 million annually, which at the time worked out to less
than 0.1 percent of NASAs total budgeta drop in the bucket compared
to the billions spent on other types of space science or defense research and
43. Jill Tarter, e-mail message to author, 16 July 1997.
44. Keay Davidson, Scientists Gather in S.F., This Time on a Note of Hope, San Francisco
Examiner (17 February 1994), p. A4.
45. Jill Tarter, e-mail message to author, 16 July 1997.
46. Leonard David, The Search Begins, Final Frontier (February 1993): 2527 and 5354, esp.
p. 54.
37
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
development programs.
47
SETIs small budget meant that few contractors
were involved. Since the SETI program people prided themselves on being
self-reliant and developing much of their own hardware and software,
48
there
were no major engineering support contracts or big aerospace frms to lobby
Congress on the programs behalf. Although the program might have been
lean and mean, it provided little political pork in the form of jobs in
congressional districts around the country.
Te SETI program was also a casualty of intensifed congressional and
public anxiety over the ballooning federal budget defcit. In 1993 the new
Clinton administration and Congress were taking a hard look at overall fed-
eral spending. Congress was searching for programs that would be easy to
cut. While $12 million in one year obviously would hardly erase the defcit,
the programs $100 million price tag over 10 years sounded more like real
money and wasteful to boot if one characterized it as searching for little
green men.
Te latter half of 1993 was also a particularly trying time for NASA politi-
cally. During that summer and autumn, NASA had barely won two bruising
battles over continuation of the multibillion-dollar Space Station program
and the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor program. Te Hubble Space Telescope
was still sufering from its spherical aberration problem.
49
In short, after
waging these larger battles, NASA had little political ammunition left to
defend a small program such as SETI. While top NASA ofcials such as
Daniel Goldin, who had been the Administrator since May 1992, and Wesley
Huntress, a planetary scientist who had been the Associate Administrator
for Space Science for the previous six months, publicly supported SETI, it
was more a question of how hard they could aford to push. Linda Billings, a
former support contractor for the program at NASA Headquarters, believes
that the SETI program administrators didnt fully appreciate that the fate of
47. Historical budget data for NASA as a whole are available in Appendices D1D3 of the annual
Aeronautics and Space Report of the President; see, for example, the FY07 edition of this
report, available online at http://history.nasa.gov/presrep.htm.
48. Gary Coulter, telephone conversation with author, 17 July 1997.
49. See, for example, Robert W. Stewart, House OKs Space Station by 1 Vote, Los Angeles Times,
24 June 1993, available at http://articles.latimes.com/1993-06-24/news/mn-6643_1_
space-station (accessed 26 April 2013); and U.S. General Accounting Ofce, Shuttle Rocket
Motor Program: NASA Should Delay Awarding Some Construction Contracts, Rep. GAO/
NSIAD-92-201, ed. Mark E. Gebicke (April 1992), available online at http://archive.gao.gov/
d32t10/146526.pdf (accessed 26 April 2013). The rst Hubble servicing mission took place in
December 1993.
38
A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
this project was just one of many issues for congressional stafers and that
they therefore didnt see the need to engage proactively with their perceived
and actual allies on Capitol Hill.
50
Te program was also contending with the giggle factor. Despite the
programs well-attested scientifc validity, it was easy for opponents to make
jokes at its expense. SETI program researchers hated this, of course, but
once the dialogue descended to this level, it became harder and harder for
the program to be taken seriously. In addition, the nature of the search pro-
gram meant that no immediate or defnitive results were likely; still, this was
another source of criticism.
While the cancellation of congressional funding in 1993 might have
seemed abrupt, SETI had in fact sufered political difculties for a number
of years. Senator Bryan was not the frst member of Congress to ridicule or
try to cancel the program: Proxmire and Conte were just a few of the others.
One key Hill stafer heavily criticized the program after the fact, calling it a
very narrowly focused rife-shot program that was supported only by those
elitist people who worked on it.
51

Perhaps even more problematic were adversaries such as Senator Bryan,
who did not want to debate the programs merits in earnest. Bryan appar-
ently felt that he had all the information he needed to make a decision.
SETI program administrators knew that Bryan was opposed to the project
and tried repeatedly to talk with him or his staf. A decade earlier, Sagan had
been able to win over Proxmire, but this time Bryan simply refused to meet
with anyone associated with SETI. According to Jill Tarter, she and other
program researchers had been working with NASAs legislative afairs ofce
for over a year to arrange such a meeting with Bryan and Huntress, only to
50. Linda Billings, telephone conversation with author, 10 July 1997; and Linda Billings, e-mail
messages to author, 21 July 1997 and 9 June 2011. Billings also wrote a chapter entitled
From the Observatory to Capitol Hill, covering the political history of SETI to 1990, in First
Contact: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, ed. Ben Bova and Byron Preiss (New York:
Plume Penguin Books, 1990).
51. Kevin Kelly, conversation with author, 2 July 1997. During this conversation, Kelly dismissed
the claim by SETI supporters that if this doesnt get funded by Congress, it wont get done
as being false, since the SETI Institute was able to continue Project Phoenix with private
funds. Project Phoenix, however, continued only the targeted search portion of NASAs SETI
program; the all-sky survey had to be dropped due to lack of funding. Kelly also asserted that
doing ground-based astronomy is not part of NASAs primary mission, but even most casual
observers would probably concede that looking for ETI aligns with NASAs overall mission more
closely than with that of any other agency.
39
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
be caught of guard when Bryans ofce fnally called at the last minute and
nobody from NASA was available.
52
As program manager Gary Coulter put
it, he never knew of anyone initially opposed to SETI who, after listening to
the proponents side of things, did not at least move to a neutral position. In
other words, he felt that Bryan was not fghting fairly.
53
In 1993, SETI also had a problem beyond the halls of Congress: it was
an unconventional program that did not ft neatly into any specifc scientifc
discipline whose members could support it when times got tough. SETI had
begun under the aegis of NASAs Life Sciences Division, in part because of
John Billinghams interest. Once it was restarted as HRMS in 1992, it was
moved to the Solar System Exploration Division, but some planetary scien-
tists did not receive it warmly because they felt that it did not come with its
own money in a time of tight budgets.
54
Tat is to say, some TOPS program
scientists did not want to be tainted by SETIs problems.
55
Because SETI was an astrobiology program that used the tools and
techniques of radio astronomy, neither the biology nor the astronomy
communities fully embraced it.
56
According to one observer, the average
radio astronomer saw SETI as a distraction.
57
A 1991 decade-long survey
of astronomy projects by the National Academy of Sciences called the
search for ETI very exciting but cautioned that the speculative nature of
the subject demanded especially innovative technology development and
careful peer review.
58
While some critics singled out such language as a
52. Jill Tarter, e-mail message to author, 23 July 1997.
53. Coulter, personal communication, 17 July 1997.
54. Jill Tarter, e-mail message to author, 23 July 1997.
55. Steven Dick, e-mail message to author, 17 July 1997.
56. For an excellent discussion of the distinctions among astrobiology, SETI, exobiology, and so
forth, see Linda Billings, Are We All There Is? Astrobiology in Culture, paper presented at
the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA,
20 February 2010. A copy of this paper has been deposited in the NASA Historical Reference
Collection at the NASA History Program Ofce, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. Billings
believes that more clarity about these differences will lead to better public understanding and
appreciation of this scientic research. As she concludes, astrobiologists will do well to be
mindful of public interest in their research; consider why people are interested; and tend to the
task of communicating clearly, and meaningfully, about their work (p. 10).
57. David H. Smith, telephone conversation with author, 7 July 1997. Smith has been a staff ofcer
of the Space Studies Board at the National Academy of Sciences since 1991.
58. Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee, The Decade of Discovery in Astronomy and
Astrophysics (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1991), p. 62; also available online
40
A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
less-than-resounding endorsement, this was largely because SETI didnt fall
naturally into the domain of the commission members, who were mostly
conventional nighttime astronomers, with the notable exception of Frank
Drake.
59
Unfortunately, few people or groups exist who are both willing and
able to stand up in support of basic scientifc research. Despite former pro-
gram ofcial John Rummels conviction that there were a few such people,
he also believes that they were surprised by the political tactics of Senator
Bryan.
60
Whether the SETI program was managed by NASA life scientists
or astronomers was less signifcant than the fact that neither discipline
supported it wholeheartedly at this formative stage. With all these factors
entering into the political equation, it is hardly surprising that Congress
canceled funding for the SETI program in 1993.
Postscript
Although HRMS was a very small project by NASA standards, it dwarfed
all other SETI eforts combined.
61
Compared to the $100 million or more
that it typically cost to build and launch a spacecraft, $12 million was indeed
a very modest annual budget. NASA funding for SETI had hovered in the
$1 million to $2 million range for about a decade before it jumped to $4.42
million in FY90, $11.5 million in FY91, $12.25 million in FY92, and $12
million in FY93 (see appendix). Up until the congressional cancellation,
NASA was the main government sponsor of SETI research, and private fund-
ing had not been very signifcant.
After Congress eliminated federal support for the SETI program, the SETI
Institute was able to take over the targeted search portion of HRMS in 1994,
aptly renaming the revived efort as Project Phoenix. High-profle private
donors from the computer industry, such as Paul Allen, William Hewlett,
at http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=1634&page=62 (accessed 26 April 2013).
This report is often informally referred to as the Bahcall Report, after the committees chair-
man, John Bahcall.
59. Kevin Kelly, conversation with author, 2 July 1997; and David H. Smith, conversation with
author, 7 July 1997.
60. John Rummel, letter to author, 21 July 1997. Rummel was the SETI Program Scientist at NASA
Headquarters from 19871993.
61. The quotation comes from an unattributed article titled The Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence: A Short History, published online by the Planetary Society; a hard copy of this
article will be processed in the NASA Historical Reference Collection.
41
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Gordon Moore, Barney Oliver, and David Packard, as well as many other
individuals contributed funds, and NASA loaned equipment to the SETI
Institute to make Phoenix possible.
62
Project Phoenix scientists began their observations in February 1995,
using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. Two Northern Hemisphere
campaigns followed, using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and
the Arecibo facility in Puerto Rico. Phoenix scientists targeted nearby Sun-
like stars and observed approximately 800 stars, as well as specifc exoplanets
discovered after Project Phoenix began. For each star, almost two billion chan-
nels were analyzed. Phoenix scientists developed the cutting-edge technique
of real-time interference monitoring, using a second radio telescope to
confrm any promising signals. Project Phoenix concluded its three observing
campaigns in March 2004.
63
In 2001, Paul Allen, a cofounder of the Microsoft Corporation, provided
$25 million as seed funding for what became known as the Allen Telescope
Array (ATA), a planned set of 350 radio astronomy dishes for SETI research.
Te SETI Institute then raised another $25 million to build the frst 42
dishes, which began operating in 2007. Te ATA may eventually be able to
search nearby stars approximately 100 times faster than Project Phoenix and
62. Jill Tarter, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Annual Review of Astronomy and
Astrophysics 39 (2001): 511548, esp. pp. 536537; David Whitehouse, Radio search
for ET draws a blank, 25 March 2004, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/
nature/3567729.stm (accessed 26 April 2013); and http://www.seti.org/node/662, http://
www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/project-phoenix, http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/
project/details/project-phoenix-frequently-asked-question, and http://www.seti.org/seti-
institute/project/details/seti-history (accessed 18 October 2013).
63. For more on Project Phoenix, see the following pages on the SETI Institute Web site: http://
www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/arecibo-puerto-rico-1998-2004, http://www.seti.
org/seti-institute/project/details/green-bank-west-virginia-1996-1998, http://www.seti.org/
seti-institute/project/details/parkes-australia-1996, and http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/
project/details/project-phoenix-frequently-asked-question (accessed 18 October 2013);
hard copies of these online sources will be processed in the NASA Historical Reference
Collection. See also The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: A Short History; and
Whitehouse, Radio search for ET draws a blank. The rst exoplanet, 51 Pegasi, was
discovered in 1995. See, for example, Exoplanet History From Intuition to Discovery,
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/page/history (accessed
18 October 2013); a hard copy of this article will be processed in the NASA Historical
Reference Collection.
42
A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
could expand Project Phoenixs search net to 100,000 and perhaps to as many
as 1,000,000 nearby stars.
64
Another setback for SETI scientists occurred in spring 2011, when budget
cuts by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the State of California
forced them to mothball the ATA equipment. Te approximate annual cost
of ATAs daily operations was $1.5 million in addition to $1 million allot-
ted annually for scientifc analysis and research. Te NSF cut its support by
90 percent and the State of California also cut funding for Berkeleys Radio
Astronomy Laboratory, which partnered with the SETI Institute in the plan-
ning and operation of the ATA from 2004 to April 2011.
65
Tis crisis was followed by another SETI comeback in December 2011,
when the ATA was brought out of hibernation. Trough a SETIStars.org
fund-raising campaign that yielded $200,000 and a separate collaboration
with the Air Force, the SETI Institute was able to bring the ATA back online.
Scientists can now use the ATAs unique capabilities to analyze the tens of mil-
lions of wavelengths emitted from the more than 1,200 exoplanets recently
identifed by the Kepler spacecraft, dozens of which could potentially sup-
port life.
66
Not all of the consequences of the NASA SETI programs cancellation
proved to be negative. Among the positive outcomes were increased funding
from the Planetary Society for all-sky searches, such as Paul Horowitzs Project
64. See http://www.seti.org/ata (accessed 26 April 2013); Seth Shostak, Searching for Science:
SETI Today, International Journal of Astrobiology 2, no. 2 (2003): 113; and Lisa M. Krieger,
SETI Institute to Shut Down Alien-Seeking Radio Dishes, The San Jose Mercury News, 26
April 2011, available at http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_17926565 (accessed 18 October
2013). See also http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/general-overview and http://
www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/fact-sheet (accessed 18 October 2013).
65. Krieger, SETI Institute to Shut Down Alien-Seeking Radio Dishes; and Tom Pierson, e-mail
message to SETI Institute supporters, 22 April 2011, posted at http://archive.seti.org/pdfs/
ATA-hibernation.pdf (accessed 26 April 2013).
66. See SETI Search Resumes at Allen Telescope Array, Targeting New Planets, http://www.seti.
org/node/905 (accessed 26 April 2013); Jenny Chynoweth, Thank you, SETIStars!, 5 October
2011 SETIStars blog post, http://info.setistars.org/2011/10/gearing-up-for-the-ata-re-
launch (accessed 26 April 2013); Dennis Overbye, Search Resumes for Evidence of Life Out
There, New York Times, 5 December 2011; AFSPC Explores Allen Telescope Array for Space
Surveillance, http://www.seti.org/node/905 (accessed 3 July 2013) and http://www.afspc.
af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123150121 (accessed 3 July 2013). The last Web site is an Air
Force news release showing that even in 2009, the Air Force was considering using the ATA
for space situational awareness.
43
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
BETA (Billion-channel Extraterrestrial Assay) at the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics; the formation in 1994 of the nonproft SETI League,
which just a year later initiated Project Argus, another new, privately funded
all-sky survey; and continued expansion of the Search for Extraterrestrial Radio
Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations (SERENDIP),
begun in 1979 at UC Berkeley.
Concurrent with the growth of computing power, SERENDIP projects
have increased the bandwidth and number of channels they search, efec-
tively broadening the search net.
67
In 1999, researchers at the University of
California initiated the SETI@home project, utilizing the power of distrib-
uted computing to process SETI observational data.
68
Using the projects
screensaver software on their personal computers, members of the public can
process discrete batches of data. Tis crowdsourcing approach was obviously
designed to build a broad public constituency for SETI research.
As befts such international scientifc eforts, scientists and volunteers
from countries around the globe have also been involved in SETI. Australia
brought SERENDIP equipment to the Parkes radio telescope, and for a
time scientists there were involved in the SERENDIP project. Nations such
as France, Argentina, and Italy are sponsoring more modest SETI eforts. In
years past, the Soviet Union sponsored a signifcant amount of SETI research;
more recently, however, Russian support has dwindled to a trickle.
69

67. For a good recent summary of optical SETI efforts, see Curtis Mead and Paul Horowitz, Harvards
Advanced All-sky Optical SETI, in Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, ed. Douglas
A. Vakoch (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), p. 125. See also David Koerner and
Simon LeVay, Here Be Dragons: The Scientic Quest for Extraterrestrial Life (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000), p. 165. Bruce Murray, a former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
was one of the founders, along with Carl Sagan and Louis Friedman, of the Planetary Society
in 1980. See http://www.planetary.org/about (accessed 26 April 2013) and The Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence: A Short History. Murrays reasoning is that we should not assume
too much about extraterrestrial intelligence by focusing searches on nearby stars with Earth-like
exoplanets. For more information on the SETI League, see What is The SETI League, Inc.?
at http://www.setileague.org/general/whatis.htm (accessed 26 April 2013); What is Project
Argus? at http://www.setileague.org/argus/whargus.htm (accessed 26 April 2013); and http://
www.setileague.org (accessed 26 April 2013). For more information on SERENDIP, see http://
seti.berkeley.edu/SERENDIP and SERENDIP V.v Installation Report, at http://seti.berkeley.edu/
serendip-vv-installation-report (both accessed 26 April 2013).
68. See, for example, http://seti.berkeley.edu/setiathome/aboutseti (accessed 26 April 2013).
69. Koerner and LeVay, Here Be Dragons, pp. 172173; and History of SETI, http://www.seti.org/
seti-institute/about-seti/press-materials/backgrounders/history-of-seti.
44
A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
Since the congressional cancellation, the general publics and the scientifc
communitys interest in and appreciation for astrobiology has signifcantly
increased.
70
A notable episode from 1996 was that of the Mars rock, a
meteorite discovered in Antarctica which scientists at that time believed might
contain Martian microfossils (a possibility that remains unproved), and a sub-
sequent meeting chaired by thenVice President Gore with national experts
on the scientifc and societal implications of potential extraterrestrial life.
71

Over the past 15 years the number of known exoplanets has risen dramatically
from a small handful to more than 800 confrmed, with more than 1,200
potential exoplanets identifed by the Kepler spacecraft scientifc team as of
July 2013.
72

NASAs Origins program, consisting of several large space telescopes,
began gearing up in the late 1990s.
73
NASA Administrator Dan Goldin
believed that in some ways, biology was the future of space, and he encour-
aged employees to study biology since few had any biological training in
the mid-1990s.
74
In 1996, NASA began a formal Astrobiology Program,
70. The 1997 lm Contact, directed by Robert Zemeckis, can be seen as cultural evidence of this
trend. Based on Carl Sagans novel of the same name, Contact features a leading character
modeled on SETI scientist Jill Tarter. The lm grossed over $170 million; see http://www.imdb.
com/title/tt0118884 (accessed 26 April 2013).
71. See Kathy Sawyer, The Rock from Mars: A True Detective Story on Two Planets (New York:
Random House, 2006); Statement of Vice Presidents Space Science Symposium, December
12, 1996, copy in le 9009, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA Headquarters,
Washington, DC; and Steven J. Dick and James E. Strick, The Mars Rock, chapter 8 in The
Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 2004), pp. 179201.
72. See http://exoplanet.eu/catalog.php (accessed 26 April 2013) and http://kepler.nasa.gov/
news/keplerinthenews/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=102 (accessed 26 April
2013).
73. See, for example, the 1997 fact sheet at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/fact_sheets/origins.pdf
(accessed 26 April 2013).
74. Goldin kicked off a three-part biology colloquium at NASA Headquarters in 1998 by noting that
a biological revolution will take place in the 21st century, analogous in scale to the changes
brought about by physics and engineering in the 20th century. The colloquium featured such
notables as Bruce Alberts, head of the National Academy of Sciences from 1993 to 2005.
See Talking Points of Mr. Goldin for the Biology Colloquium, le 32164, NASA Historical
Reference Collection, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. See also the 12 January 1998
edition of the NASA HQ Bulletin, also available in the NASA Historical Reference Collection.
45
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
building on exobiology and more than 35 years of research by NASA sci-
entists.
75
Ten in 1998, Goldin established the virtual NASA Astrobiology
Institute (NAI), which is centered at Ames Research Center and currently
consists of more than 700 scientists and faculty at 15 diferent sites.
76
In
addition to the NAI, NASAs Astrobiology Program now includes three
other research elements: Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology, Astrobiology
Science and Technology for Exploring Planets, and Astrobiology Science and
Technology for Instrument Development.
77
One of the goals enunciated in
the Astrobiology Programs 2008 road map calls for scientists to determine
how to recognize signatures of life on other worlds.
78
In pursuit of this objec-
tive, NASA has awarded a few small grants to SETI Institute scientists for
non-SETI astrobiological research.
79

In the mid-1990s the SETI Institute split its work into two main divisions:
the Center for SETI Research and what later became known as the Carl Sagan
Center. Barney Oliver had died in 1995 and bequeathed a signifcant sum
of money to the SETI Institute, which helped to establish the astrobiology
program.
80
It is also possible that after the congressional debacle of 1993,
the SETI Institute chose to separate these two areas of research so that its
astrobiology work and its very organization could better survive politically.
75. See http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/about-astrobiology/ (accessed 26 April 2013).
76. See, for example, http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/about/ (accessed 26 April 2013); and Dick
and Strick, The Living Universe, pp. 1920.
77. See http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/about-astrobiology/ (accessed 26 April 2013). Thanks also
to Linda Billings for pointing out the relationship between NASAs Astrobiology Program and
the NAI.
78. The road map is available at http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/roadmap/ (accessed 26 April 2013).
This site links to a version of David J. Des Marais, Joseph A. Nuth III, et al., Focus Paper: The
NASA Astrobiology Roadmap, Astrobiology 8, no. 4 (2008): 715730. Goal 7 (detailed on pp.
729730) is to identify biosignatures of distant technologies.
79. Marc Kaufman writes, in First Contact: Scientic Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond
Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), that NASA and the National Science Foundation
have reopened their grant competition to SETI projects (p. 13) without providing a source for
this information. NASA Astrobiology Institute Director Carl Pilcher claried the probable mean-
ing of this in an e-mail dated 27 May 2011. According to Tom Pierson, Jill Tarter did receive
a principal investigatorlevel grant through NASAs Science Mission Directorates peer-review
process for developing some specic SETI technology, and there may have been a couple of
other similar grants (telephone conversation with author, 3 June 2011).
80. See http://www.seti.org/page.aspx?pid=235 and http://www.seti.org/page.aspx?pid=237
(accessed 26 April 2013); Tom Pierson, telephone conversation with author, 3 June 2011.
46
A Political History of NASAs SETI Program
Overall, astrobiology has clearly come into its own as an accepted scientifc
feld of study supported by the government, while SETI research has had to
fy under the radar by making do with a patchwork of private support. Te
government has awarded grants for principal investigatorlevel SETI propos-
als, yet no signifcant eforts to resurrect NASA funding for a dedicated SETI
project have occurred since 1993.
81
Somehow, it seems that SETI remains
tainted by the congressional politics of the early 1990s, while astrobiology
has enjoyed a much higher public profle.
Overall, since 1993, scientists have managed to perform some smaller-
scale SETI research. Simultaneously, astrobiology has experienced tremen-
dous growth and acceptance as a scientifc discipline. Public funding was
again withdrawn from SETI research in 2011, this time in the case of the
Allen Telescope Array. Yet within a year, private fund-raising and a collabo-
ration with the Air Force combined to revive that particular SETI project.
What can we learn about the intersection of politics and science from this
SETI case study? One obvious lesson is that good science does not always
triumph on its own merits. Communicating ones case efectively on Capitol
Hill is always important, and nobody should be surprised to learn that politics
often trumps policy, in science as in other felds. Advocates of SETI research
certainly hope that future congressional and public debate over basic science
programs will be conducted in a more open, better-informed manner.
81. Douglas Vakoch, e-mail message to author, 13 May 2011; and Tom Pierson, telephone conver-
sation with author, 3 June 2011.
47
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
CHAPTER TWO, APPENDIX
Funding History for the NASA SETI Program
SETI Area
Funding ($K) FY75 FY76 FY77 FY78 FY79 FY80 FY81 FY82 FY83 FY84
SETI Microwave
Observing
Project
140 310 400 130 300 500 1895 0 1800 1500
Denition/R&D 140 310 400 130 300 500 1895 0 1800 1500
Program/
Project C/D
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
SETI Area
Funding ($K) FY85 FY86 FY87 FY88 FY89 FY90 FY91 FY92 FY93 TOTAL
SETI Microwave
Observing
Project
1505 1574 2175 2403 2260 4233 11500 12250 12000 56875
Denition/R&D 1505 1574 2175 2403 0 0 0 0 0 14632
Program/
Project C/D
0 0 0 0 2260 4233 11500 12250 12000 42243
Note: FY92 and FY93 gures are for the High Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS). In October 1993, Congress directed
NASA to discontinue the HRMS program. (Credit: Jens Feeley, NASA Headquarters Ofce of Space Science, June 1997.)
48
CHAPTER THREE
The Role of Anthropology in SETI
A Historical View
1
Steven J. Dick
Tree events mark the beginning of the modern era of the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI): 1) the publication of the landmark
paper by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison, Searching for Interstellar
Communications, in Nature in 1959, suggesting that a search be carried
out at the 21-cm radio wavelength; 2) Frank Drakes Project Ozma in 1960,
which conducted the frst such search at Green Bank, West Virginia; and
3) a small but now legendary conference at Green Bank in 1961, where the
feasibility of a search was discussed and the Drake Equation was frst pro-
posed as a method for estimating the number of communicative civilizations
in our Milky Way galaxy. Modern SETI was born during those three years,
19591961, setting the agenda for the feld over much of the next 50 years.
2
By the 1960s, when modern SETI began, anthropology as a discipline
was almost a century old. Te word anthropology derives from the Greek
anthropos, meaning man or mankind, which indicates that the discipline
is meant to encompass the study of humans. One might well ask, then, why
it should apply to the extraterrestrial life debate, which obviously deals with
nonhumans. Te answer is that in its broadest sense anthropology has devel-
oped a set of approaches to and methods for analyzing cultures and cultural
evolution. Any intelligent species that may exist beyond Earth is likely to have
developed culture. If, as many SETI proponents expect, that culture turns
out to be millions of years old, cultural evolution will have taken place, with
all that implies for development, communication, cultural difusion, and so
on. All of these phenomena are areas of study that anthropologists, along
1. This chapter is adapted from Steven J. Dick Anthropology and the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence: An Historical View, Anthropology Today 22, no. 2 (2006): 37.
2. Steven J. Dick, The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and
the Limits of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 414431.
49
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
with their colleagues in the social and behavioral sciences, have refned over
the past century for terrestrial cultures.
3
In this paper, I examine the role that anthropology has historically played
in SETI, and how the two intellectual cultures of natural scientists and social
scientists made contact. I argue that these historical interactions bode well for
benefcial mutual interactions between anthropology and SETI in the future.
What has been lacking is a systematic approach applying anthropology to the
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Tere is considerable evidence that
such a study will beneft both disciplines.
Beginnings
It would seem self evident that the social sciences, and anthropology in particu-
lar, have the potential to illuminate a subject so centrally concerned with soci-
eties and cultural evolution, even if the setting happens to be extraterrestrial.
Yet, the historical record shows that the social sciences played no important
role in SETIs frst decade. Tis circumstance undoubtedly refects a variety
of factors, including C. P. Snows two cultures phenomenon, increasing
specialization already in full swing in the early 1960s, and plenty of problems
on Earth for social scientists to tackle. Tus, while the Green Bank conference
included astronomers, physicists, a biochemist, an engineer, and even a spe-
cialist on dolphin communication (John Lilly), no one represented the social
sciences or humanities. Tis is hardly surprising when one considers that the
conference organizer was the National Academy of Sciences, an organization
devoted largely to physical science and mathematics.
What is interesting, however, is that the social sciences, stimulated by these
early activities and discussions, did play a peripheral role in SETI almost from
its modern beginnings. It is no accident that the frst article of anthropological
interest to SETI was published in Nature in 1962 and cited the Cocconi and
Morrison article. It was entitled Interstellar Communication and Human
Evolution and authored by Robert Ascher and Marcia Ascher, respectively
an anthropologist and a mathematician at Cornell, the home institution of
Cocconi and Morrison. Signifcantly, this article was included in the frst essay
collection on the topic of SETI, a volume edited by the astrophysicist A. G.
W. Cameron, published in 1963, and entitled Interstellar Communication. Te
articles inclusion was a de facto recognition by at least one natural scientist that
3. On the development of anthropology in the context of the social sciences, see Roger Smith,
The Norton History of the Human Sciences (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997).
50
The Role of Anthropology in SETI
the social sciences might have something to add to the embryonic SETI debate.
Te article argues that models founded on our knowledge of human evolution
might contribute to SETI endeavors. In particular, the authors suggest an anal-
ogy between prehistoric contact and exchange, and hypothesized extraterrestrial
contact and exchange.
4
In early prehistory, when biologically distinct hominid
populations existed, they point out, contact occurred between technologically
similar but biologically diverse populations. In later prehistory contact was
usually initiated by those populations with advanced techniques and equal
exchange was rare. Tis history, they suggest, might shed light on the nature
of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Such comparisons bring with them
all the problems of analogy, but the Aschers article pioneered the idea that
anthropology might aid SETI through a study of human evolution.
Meanwhile a NASA-commissioned study, published in 1961, had
broached another possible role for the social sciences in SETIassessing
the impact of the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence. Written as part
of a mandate in the National Aeronautics and Space Act to examine the
efects of the space program on American society, a brief section discussed
the implications of discovering life beyond Earth. Te social science authors
viewed the recently completed Project Ozma (which had no connection to
NASA) as having popularized and legitimized speculation about the impact
of such a discovery on human values. Te Brookings report authors empha-
sized that reactions by both individuals and governments to radio contact
with an alien intelligence would likely depend on religious, cultural, and
social backgrounds, as well as on the content of the message received. In a
statement often cited since, the authors warned that substantial contact could
trigger a foreboding efect: Anthropological fles contain many examples of
societies, sure of their place in the universe, which have disintegrated when
they had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing diferent
ideas and diferent life ways; others that survived such an experience usually
did so by paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behavior.
5

4. Robert Ascher and Marcia Ascher, Interstellar Communication and Human Evolution,
Nature 193, no. 4819 (1962): 940941, reprinted in Interstellar Communication, ed. A. G. W.
Cameron (New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1963), pp. 306308, esp. p. 307.
5. Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs, Prepared
for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration by the Brookings Institution, Report of
the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, 87th Congress, 1st
session, 24 March 1961 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1961), pp. 215216. The report was prepared
under the direction of Donald N. Michael, a social psychologist primarily responsible for the inter-
pretations, conclusions, and recommendations in, and the nal drafting of this report (p. viii).
51
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Tis statement begs for elaboration and documentation. Over the past four
decades, anthropology has certainly tackled the problem of cultural contact
among terrestrial societies. But it has not systematically studied the possible
efects of extraterrestrial contact.
Already by the early 1960s, then, two roles had been identifed for anthro-
pology in the context of SETI: the study of human evolutionary models as
analogies for extraterrestrial contact and the study of its potential repercus-
sions. Both roles embedded the problems and the promise of analogical think-
ing but, cautiously undertaken, held potential for further research.
6
Early SETI Overtures to Social Science
Tese ideas lay mostly fallow during the tumultuous decade of the 1960s,
when only two SETI searches were carried out, one in the United States
and one in the Soviet Union. Te realization gradually dawned on SETI
proponents that the social sciences might be useful, even essential, to their
discussions. Nowhere was this more true than in the case of the cultural com-
ponents of the Drake Equation, which embodies all facets of cosmic evolu-
tion, including astronomical, biological, and cultural. In particular its last two
componentsthe probability of the evolution of technologically sophisticated
civilizations and the lifespans of such civilizationswere clearly in the realm
of the social sciences. Tis realization was in evidence at an international
meeting on CETI (Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence) held
in the Soviet Union in 1971 and organized by Carl Sagan, Phil Morrison,
Frank Drake, and their Soviet colleagues. It was sponsored jointly by the
National Academies of Sciences of the United States and the USSR at a time
when the Cold War was still very hot. Among those at the meeting were such
luminaries as Francis Crick, Tommy Gold, Freeman Dyson, Gunther Stent,
and Marvin Minsky. But also included in that landmark meeting were two
anthropologists, Kent Flannery of the University of Michigan and Richard
B. Lee of the University of Toronto, as well as historian William H. McNeill
6. On the use of analogy in astrobiology, see articles and references in Douglas A. Vakoch, ed.,
Astrobiology, History and Society: Life Beyond Earth and the Impact of Discovery (Heidelberg:
Springer, 2013). For a contemporary view of these problems in connection with the space
program, see Bruce Mazlish, ed., The Railroad and the Space Program: An Exploration in
Historical Analogy (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1965), passim. For the general use of anal-
ogy in thinking see Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Tensions: Analogy
as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking (New York: Basic Books, 2013).
52
The Role of Anthropology in SETI
of the University of Chicago. Tere they debated the natural scientists about
the evolution of technical civilizations. No conclusions were reached, but the
natural scientists were clearly interested in what the social scientists had to say.
7
At least token representation of the social sciences became quite common
at gatherings where extraterrestrial intelligence was discussed. When NASA
sponsored a 1972 symposium at Boston University titled Life Beyond Earth
and the Mind of Man, anthropologist Ashley Montagu was among the
speakers His topic was the prospective reaction of humans to the discovery
of extraterrestrial intelligence. Montagu concluded that it is the communica-
tion we make at our initial encounter that is crucial. He recommended that
no government ofcial be allowed to participate in any way in responding to
a signal but rather that independent bodies be set up outside governmental
auspices, outside the United Nations, operating possibly within or in associa-
tion with a university, whose object shall be to design possible means of estab-
lishing frank and friendly communicative relations with beyond-Earthers.
(Te SETI Institute was founded 12 years later with message construction
eventually becoming one of its activities.) Furthermore, Montagu counseled,
I do not think we should wait until the encounter occurs; we
should do all in our power to prepare ourselves for it. Te man-
ner in which we frst meet may determine the character of all
our subsequent relations. Let us never forget the fatal impact we
have had upon innumerable peoples on this Earthpeoples of
our own species who trusted us, befriended us, and whom we
destroyed by our thoughtlessness and insensitivity to their needs
and vulnerabilities.
8

Montagus point was again a plea for the study of culture contacts.
In the mid-1970s the scientifc community and NASA in particular were
taking a more serious interest in SETI.
9
Te guiding light of SETI at NASA
was John Billingham at NASAs Ames Research Center in Mofett Field,
7. See Carl Sagan, ed., Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI) (Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, 1973), passim, esp. pp. 85111.
8.

Ashley Montagu, Comments, in Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man: A Symposium, ed.
Richard Berendzen (Washington, DC: NASA SP-328, 1973), pp. 24, 25.
9. Steven J. Dick and James E. Strick, The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of
Astrobiology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), pp. 131154; and Steven
J. Dick, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the NASA High Resolution Microwave
Survey (HRMS): Historical Perspectives, Space Science Reviews 64, nos. 12 (1993): 93139.
53
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
California. It was he who organized a series of workshops, chaired by Philip
Morrison, with the goal of getting a NASA SETI program of the ground,
complete with NASA funding. Part of that efort was a workshop on cul-
tural evolution, which was chaired by Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg and
included anthropologist Bernard Campbell. Te workshop focused on the
evolution of intelligence and technology. Te summary of the workshop,
published in the landmark NASA volume Te Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, edited by Philip Morrison, John Billingham, and John Wolfe,
asserted that our new knowledge has changed the attitude of many special-
ists about the generality of cultural evolution from one of skepticism to a
belief that it is a natural consequence of evolution under many environ-
mental circumstances, given enough time.
10
Te cultural evolution panel
discussed what evolutionary factors were responsible for hominid intelligence:
warfare, communication and language, the predatory nature of life on the
savannah. Arguing that evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson had been too
pessimistic, they even quantifed the probability that both intelligence and
technology would evolve, assuming life had originated on any given planet.
Tat probability, they said, was 1 in 100. Campbell contended that planets
capable of producing intelligent civilizations must have heterogeneous and
time-variable environments, since on Earth evolution does not occur when
environments are stable and homogeneous.
Tree years later Campbell participated in yet another landmark NASA
meeting on Life in the Universe, also organized by John Billingham and held
at NASA Ames. Here he discussed the evolution of technological species on
Earth in an attempt to gain insight into the question of extraterrestrial tech-
nological species. He described four stages of early technology development,
ranging from prototechnology (tool use and modifcation) and technology
itself (tool manufacture) to pyrotechnology (fre control and metal industries)
and energy control. He argued that in an extraterrestrial context, prototech-
nology would likely be common wherever animals have evolved, but more
advanced technology would probably occur only among strongly social species.
Technology, he concluded, is adaptive, cumulative and generally progressive.
At its simplest it is older than reason. At its most advanced, it is the product of
cooperative undertakings by large numbers of highly intelligent organisms.
11
10. Philip Morrison, John Billingham, and John Wolfe, eds., The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(SETI) (Washington, DC: NASA-SP-419, 1977), pp. 4952; for the agenda and a list of participants
in the Workshop on Evolution of Intelligent Species and Technological Civilizations, see pp. 275276.
11.

Bernard Campbell, Evolution of Technological Species, in Life in the Universe, ed. John
Billingham (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1981), pp. 277285, esp. p. 285.
54
The Role of Anthropology in SETI
Early Social Science Overtures to SETI
Sporadic though they were, these early eforts through the 1970s demonstrated
the relevance of anthropology to SETI and constitute recognition of that fact
by the scientifc community that sponsored them. However, they hardly tapped
the richness that anthropology holds for SETI. Were there proactive eforts on
the part of social scientists to tackle the subject, rather than waiting to be invited
to a SETI meeting? Te frst substantial evidence of such interest appears in the
proceedings of a symposium at the 1974 American Anthropological Association
(AAA), published in 1975 as a popular trade book titled Cultures Beyond the
Earth. Te books subtitle, Te Role of Anthropology in Outer Space, is somewhat
misleading for several reasons: only two of its eight authors were card-carrying
anthropologists, it is a mixed volume including fctional stories as well as factual
analysis, and it is not in any sense systematic. But it does include a stimulating
foreword by futurist Alvin Tofer and an afterword by anthropologist Sol Tax;
it was sponsored by the AAA as part of a Cultural Futuristics symposium;
and, most important of all, it contains ideas that were at the time new and
sophisticated. In his foreword, for example, Tofer pointed out that what we
think, imagine or dream about cultures beyond the earth not only refects our
own hidden fears and wishes, but alters them. He saw the book as important
because it forces us to disinter deeply buried premises about ourselves.
12
Tis
is a straightforward but important point, one that we do not explicitly address
often enough. Contemplating extraterrestrial cultures forces us to do that, rais-
ing, as Tofer said, the critique of our cultural assumptions to a meta-level.
Moreover, he argued, the cultures that anthropology traditionally studies are
all human and less technologically advanced; analyses of such cultures leave
vast areas of life unilluminated by contrast or comparison. Tofer went even
further, asserting that extraterrestrial anthropology
calls into question the very idea of cultures based on a single epis-
temology, of single time tracks or merely human sensory modali-
ties. It forces questions about intelligence and consciousness. It
makes one wonder whether our assumptions about probability
apply universally. In the course of all this, it also begins to give
intellectual shape to the whole question of space exploration and
its relationship to our world.
13

12. Alvin Tofer, foreword to Cultures Beyond the Earth: The Role of Anthropology in Outer Space, ed.
Magoroh Maruyama and Arthur Harkins (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), pp. viixi, esp. p. vii.
13.

Tofer, foreword in Maruyama and Harkins, eds., Cultures Beyond the Earth, p. ix.
55
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Tis profound statement gives some indication of anthropologys unrealized
potential in relation to SETI.
It is one thing for a futurist to say such things. But in his afterword, Sol
Tax, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, endorsed and
elaborated these ideas. Extraterrestrial anthropology, he said,
removes itself from our planet to view human nature as a
whole. It envisions the opportunity to study the human behavior
and the change or development of human cultures under extra-
terrestrial conditions; to test the applicability of anthropological
knowledge to the design of extraterrestrial human communities;
and to develop anthropological models for quite diferent species
of sentient and intelligent beings by using, on a higher level, the
comparative methods by which we have come to understand
each earthly culture in contrast to others.
Moreover, Tax noted, Only when we have comparisons with species that are
cultural in nonhuman wayssome of them maybe far more advanced than
wewill we approach full understanding of the possibilities and limitations
of human cultures. Nor was this a fruitless undertaking, because even if we
have no contact with nonhuman cultures in the immediate future, the models
that we meanwhile make require that we sharpen the questions that we ask
about human beings.
14
Studies of culture among animals are of course also
relevant here, especially in the evolution of culture, but they inevitably fall
in the more primitive direction. Contemplation of extraterrestrial cultures
allows us to approach the problem from the direction of more advanced cul-
tures, emphasizing that humans may not be on the upper end of a cultural
spectrum that includes species from other planets.
Between Tofer and Tax in this volume were two anthropologists, Roger W.
Wescott and Philip Singer. Wescott pointed out that anthropology brings both
strengths and weaknesses to the ETI problem. Among the strengths is the range
of its inventory of cultures, primitive and literate, extant and extinct. Among the
weaknesses is the fact that in his view anthropology tends to study the primitive
and prehistoric more than the modern cultures. SETI and space programs are
the purview of modern industrialized countries, and anthropologists are less
accustomed to operating within this context, much less with advanced extrater-
restrial civilizations. In a broader sense, however, the tools of anthropology are
14. Sol Tax, afterword in Maruyama and Harkins, eds., Cultures Beyond the Earth, pp. 200203,
esp. pp. 202203.
56
The Role of Anthropology in SETI
applicable. Wescott broached another problem with anthropologys entry into
the SETI realm, one that concerned the natural scientists also in their time:
Just as exo-biologists now run the risk of being called ex-biologists, he wrote,
so may anthropologists with extraterrestrial interests fnd themselves regarded
with suspicion by the more conservative members of their own profession.
15

Wescott also called attention to the anthropological relevance of studying cul-
tures and subcultures in Earth orbit, in lunar orbit, and on the lunar surface.
It is this aspect of extraterrestrial communities that Philip Singer addresses in
the same volume.
16
Tis view particularly resonates now, almost 40 years later,
in light of NASAs current interest in sending humans to Mars.
More substantial and infuential than the 1974 AAA meeting on cultures
beyond the Earth was the response to a crisis for SETI after the mid-1970s. Te
crisis was the so-called Fermi paradox, which asserts that if the galaxy is full of
intelligent life, given the billions-of-years timescales involved, then at least some
intelligence should have colonized the galaxy and should have arrived on Earth
by now. Yet we do not see them, so where are they? Many scientists concluded
in the 1970s and 1980s that this argument provided strong empirical evidence
that extraterrestrials do not existempirical because we do not observe them
on Earth (unless one accepts the evidence for UFOs, which SETI enthusiasts
studiously avoid).
17
Te discussion of interstellar colonization was joined by
physical scientists, who calculated colonization rates and other relevant factors.
But the difusion of cultures was primarily a problem for social scientists and
a problem familiar to cultural anthropologists.
One anthropologist in particular took up the challenge. Ben Finney,
professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii and later chair of
that department, was well known for his work on Polynesian migrations.
15. Roger W. Wescott, Toward an Extraterrestrial Anthropology, in Maruyama and Harkins, eds.,
Cultures Beyond the Earth, pp. 1226, esp. pp. 1314.
16. Philip Singer and Carl R. Vann, Extraterrestrial CommunitiesCultural, Legal, Political and
Ethical Considerations, in Maruyama and Harkins, eds., Cultures Beyond the Earth, pp. 83101.
17. For the Fermi paradox crisis in SETI, see Dick, The Biological Universe, pp. 443454. The original
articles in the mid-1970s stating the paradox are Michael H. Hart, An Explanation for the Absence of
Extraterrestrials on Earth, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 16 (1975): 128135;
and David Viewing, Directly Interacting Extra-Terrestrial Technological Communities, Journal of the
British Interplanetary Society 28 (1975): 735744. A collection of articles on the subject is found in
Michael H. Hart and Ben Zuckerman, Extraterrestrials: Where are They? (New York: Pergamon Press,
1982), 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). For a thorough discussion of possible
answers to the Fermi paradox, see Stephen Webb, Where is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to the Fermi
Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life (New York: Copernicus Books, 2002).
57
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
He began his path-breaking work with the NASA SETI community in the
mid-1980s, commencing perhaps the most sustained connection of a single
anthropologist with SETI. Under a National Research Council program to
bring university scientists into government labs, Finney applied anthropologi-
cal methods to SETIs assumptions. He challenged some of its assumptions
on the basis of terrestrial experience with deciphering ancient Egyptian and
Mayan inscriptions.
18
Most important was the book Interstellar Migration and the Human
Experience, edited by Finney and Eric Jones. Te result of a conference
on interstellar migration held in 1983 at Los Alamos National Laboratory
(LANL), where Jones worked as an astrophysicist, this collection of essays
concentrated on yet another aspect of SETI, the possibility of interstellar
colonization. Finney and Jones invited anthropologists, demographers, his-
torians, paleontologists, and philosophers as well as astronomers, physicists,
and machine intelligence specialists to discuss the subject of interstellar
migration. Among the anthropologists were Joseph Birdsell, Nancy Tanner,
and Finney himself. On the basis of humanitys evolutionary and historical
past, and its characteristic expansionary, technologically innovative, and
inquisitive nature, Finney and Jones made this prediction in the volumes
epilogue: Mankind is headed for the stars. Tat is our credo. Our descen-
dants will one day live throughout the Solar System and eventually seek to
colonize other star systems and possibly interstellar space itself. Immense
problemstechnical, economic, political, and socialwill have to be solved
for human life to spread through space. Tey recognized the dangers of
hubris and of repeating discredited expansionary and imperialistic themes
of history. Yet they concluded that although we obviously cannot predict
that human descendants will colonize the entire Galaxy, we are betting that
they will try.
19
Tis dispersion of humanity among the stars would bring not
only cultural diversity but also new species descended from humans, as well
as new cultures. Tey did not resolve the Fermi paradox. But whether life on
other planets turns out to be alien or descended from humans, anthropolo-
gists and social scientists in general will surely be anxious to study cultures
beyond Earth.
18. Ben Finney and Jerry Bentley, A Tale of Two Analogues: Learning at a Distance from
the Ancient Greeks and Maya and the Problem of Deciphering Extraterrestrial Radio
Transmissions, Acta Astronautica 42, nos. 1012 (1998): 691696, reprinted in expanded
form as chapter 4 of this volume.
19. Ben R. Finney and Eric M. Jones, eds., Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 333339, esp. pp. 338339.
58
The Role of Anthropology in SETI
The Past 25 Years: Mutual Benets?
Over the past quarter century the interaction of SETI and the social sciences
can only be described as sporadic. At professional meetings of the International
Astronautical Federation (IAF) and the International Astronomical Union
(IAU) and at international bioastronomy meetings with a variety of sponsors,
social science has been only an occasional companion to the natural sciences.
Te proceedings of the IAF SETI Committee sessions, published as special
issues of Acta Astronautica, sometimes represented anthropological or societal
interests, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. Finney, for example, continued
to examine the probable efects of contact from an anthropological point of
view.
20
A series of triennial international bioastronomy meetings inaugurated
in 1984, with the IAU as an occasional sponsor, began to show an interest
in social science aspects of SETI with its 1993 meeting, again focusing on
consequences of the discovery of ETI but also touching on other aspects.
21

And, more generally, University of Hawaii sociologist David Swift under-
took a series of revealing interviews with SETI pioneers that remains a rich
resource for future work.
22
In the early 1990s, on the eve of the inauguration of the NASA SETI
program in October 1992, John Billingham led a series of workshops on
Cultural Aspects of SETI, known as the CASETI Workshops. For the frst
time social scientists were fully integrated into the discussion of the impli-
cations of contact with extraterrestrials. Four focus groups were formed to
address history, human behavior, policy, and education, each with a mix of
20. Ben Finney, The Impact of Contact, in SETI Post-Detection Protocol, ed. Jill Tarter and
Michael Michaud, Acta Astronautica 21, no. 2 (1990): 117121. This volume represents
papers from 19861987 presented at the IAF SETI meetings.
21. For example, a section titled SETI: Societal Aspects at the 1993 meeting included papers
by Ivan Almar, The Consequences of Discovery: Different Scenarios, and Steven J. Dick,
Consequences of Success in SETI: Lessons from the History of Science, both of which were
later published in Progress in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, ed. G. Seth Shostak, ASP
Conference Series, vol. 74 (San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacic, 1995), pp.
499506 and 521532. Among other social science papers, the 1999 meeting included a
paper by Douglas A. Vakoch, Three-Dimensional Messages for Interstellar Communication,
which was published in Bioastronomy 99: A New Era in Bioastronomy, ed. G. A. Lemarchand
and Karen Meech, ASP Conference Series, vol. 213 (San Francisco: Astronomical Society of
the Pacic, 2000), pp. 623628.
22. David W. Swift, SETI Pioneers: Scientists Talk About Their Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990).
59
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
natural and social scientists. Te three recommendations produced by the
history group (which included historians John Heilbron, Steven Dick, Karl
Guthke, Jill Conway, and Ken Kenniston; anthropologist Ben Finney; and
SETI scientist Kent Cullers) are relevant here:

1. It is important that NASA study appropriate analogies drawn from
earlier human experience, while emphasizing that they are rough
guides for thinking about SETI and not precise predictors of
thefuture.
2. Study should be concentrated on analogies based on the transmis-
sion of ideas within and between cultures in preference to analogies
based on physical encounters.
3. NASAs educational programs should place SETI within the his-
torical context of humankinds efort to comprehend its place in
the universe and to understand the nature and possibility of other
intelligent life.
23
Te second recommendation, in particular, posed a challenge to the conven-
tional thinking that radio contact with ETI would be analogous to physical
culture contacts on Earth, an idea elaborated at a bioastronomy conference
in 1993, the year following the conference.
24
A few individuals have tack-
led SETI from the social science perspective. In After Contact: Te Human
Response to Extraterrestrial Life, psychologist Albert Harrison led the way,
showing how felds such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology can be
used as an aid to thinking about implications of contact, an approach that may
be generalized to astrobiology. In particular he advocates an approach called
Living Systems Teory, in which what we know about organisms, societies,
and supranational systems on Earth can be used to discuss the outer-space
analogues of aliens, alien civilizations, and the galactic club. While he does not
himself tackle the anthropological aspects, Harrison recognizes their potential
role.
25
Canadian futurist Allen Tough has undertaken research on the impact
of high-information contact with extraterrestrials and has encouraged such
23. John Billingham et al., eds., Social Implications of the Detection of an Extraterrestrial
Civilization:, A Report of the Workshops on the Cultural Aspects of SETI held in October
1991, May 1992, and September 1992 at Santa Cruz, California (Mountain View, CA: SETI
Press, 1999).
24. For more on this issue, see Dick, Consequences of Success in SETI: Lessons from the History
of Science, in Shostak, ed., Progress in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, pp. 521532.
25.

Albert A. Harrison, After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life (New York and
London: Plenum, 1997), pp. 58 and 151.
60
The Role of Anthropology in SETI
research through specialized conferences on the subject.
26
More recently, the
Canadian anthropologist and archaeologist Kathryn Denning has not only
provided a variety of keen anthropological insights into SETI but has also
become a respected member of the SETI community.
27
Te work of Douglas Vakoch on interstellar message construction, with its
emphasis on the relation between language and culture, has much in common
with linguistic anthropology.
28
Vakoch has also been instrumental in rally-
ing the anthropology community to the study of SETI. Te session titled
Anthropology, Archaeology and Interstellar Communication at the 2004
annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association30 years after
the previous AAA meeting on the subjectdemonstrates the possibility of a
larger role for anthropologists in SETI. Tat role ranges from the scholarly to
the popular; among the best-known anthropological contributions to SETI
are the science-fction novels of anthropologist Mary Doria Russell.
29

In the most general sense it is cultural evolution that drives the relationship
between SETI and anthropology. If, as most SETI proponents believe, non-
human intelligence in the universe is millions or billions of years old, we know
only one thing for certain: cultural evolution will have occurred. One can
speculate on exactly what the result might have been. Te universe may, for
example, be postbiological, full of artifcial intelligence, precisely because one
must take cultural evolution into account.
30
But, given intelligence beyond
the Earth, the fact of the occurrence of extraterrestrial cultural evolution is
26. Allen Tough, ed., When SETI Succeeds: The Impact of High-Information Contact (Bellevue, WA:
Foundation For the Future, 2000).
27.

For a recent example of her work, with numerous references, see Kathryn Denning, Social
Evolution, in Cosmos and Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context, ed. Steven J. Dick
and Mark Lupisella (Washington, DC: NASA SP-2009-4802), pp. 63124.
28. Douglas A. Vakoch, Constructing Messages to Extraterrestrials: An Exosemiotic Perspective,
Acta Astronautica 42, nos. 1012 (1998): 697704; Vakoch, The View from a Distant Star:
Challenges of Interstellar Message Making, Mercury 28, no. 2 (1999): 2632; Vakoch,
The Dialogic Model: Representing Human Diversity in Messages to Extraterrestrials, Acta
Astronautica 42, nos. 1012 (1998): 705710; Vakoch, The Conventionality of Pictorial
Representation in Interstellar Messages, Acta Astronautica 46, nos. 1012 (2000): 733736.
These are only a sampling of Vakochs many articles over the past 15 years.
29. See Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow (New York: Villard Books, 1996), and Children of God: A
Novel (New York: Villard Books, 1998).
30. For a more detailed discussion of this idea, see Steven J. Dick, Cultural Evolution, the
Postbiological Universe, and SETI, International Journal of Astrobiology 2, no. 1 (2003):
6574.
61
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
not open to doubt and is fundamentally a problem of anthropology. SETI is
at the center of the question of cultural evolution in a cosmic context, and the
study of culture in relation to cosmos may in time illuminate both terrestrial
and extraterrestrial cultures.
31
Summary
Historically anthropology has made sporadic contributions to SETI in the
following areas, each of which should be systematically elaborated:
1. Evolution of Technological Civilizations. Using empirical data from
terrestrial cultures, anthropologists can shed light on the likelihood
of the evolution of technological civilizations, their natures, and
their lifespans. Tis is a problem of physical anthropology, and the
potential of this approach has been realized since the early 1960s.
2. Cultural Contact. Using analogical studies of cultural contacts
on Earth, anthropologists may illuminate contact scenarios with
ETI, extending cultural anthropology to the extraterrestrial realm.
However, because SETI envisions remote radio contact with ETI,
rather than physical contact, the transmission of ideas may provide
a better model for SETI. Should physical contact be made in the
distant future with cultures beyond Earth, cultural anthropology
and even archaeology will become more directly relevant.
3. Interstellar Message Decipherment and Construction. Philip Morrison
has argued that deciphering an interstellar message may be a long-
term project, requiring the eforts of many scholarly disciplines
to complete. Linguistic anthropology has a role to play both in
deciphering and constructing interstellar messages.
4. Cultural Difusion. Analogical studies of human migration on
Earth may illuminate the Fermi paradox of extraterrestrial civiliza-
tions. Beyond SETI, migration studies will also be applicable to
extraterrestrial human cultures wherever they may be established.
A start on these topics has been made with the volume Interstellar
Migration and the Human Experience.
All of these approaches belong under the rubric of cultural evolution and
relate directly to the study of SETI as the third component of the Drake
Equation. Whether applying the data and lessons of terrestrial cultural
31. Steven J. Dick and Mark Lupisella, eds., Cosmos and Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic
Context (Washington, DC: NASA SP-2009-4802).
62
The Role of Anthropology in SETI
evolution to extraterrestrial cultures, tackling the implications of extrater-
restrial cultural contact and communication, or studying human migration
in a biological or a postbiological universe, anthropology has much to ofer
both in terms of data and approach. Other branches of the social sciences may
prove useful in the long-term future. For example, should physical contact
be made with extinct extraterrestrial civilizations, the methods of archaeol-
ogy will become relevant. Soviet SETI scientists have especially emphasized
this in the context of extraterrestrial artifacts that might be discovered in the
exploration of the solar system. In any case, anthropologists are uniquely
qualifed by knowledge and training to contribute to SETI. In turn, the
extraterrestrial perspective that many of us in the SETI feld have found so
invigorating also has much to ofer the discipline of anthropology, both in
expanding its boundaries, its insights, and its tools and in reassessing cultures
on Earth and seeing them anew.
Finally, the participation of anthropologists in SETI fts into the larger
project of bringing the social sciences and humanities into SETI.
32
Tis
endeavor could advance E. O. Wilsons idea of consilience, the unity of
knowledge. Ben Finney has made this point, arguing that SETI has the
potential for playing a major role in transcending intellectual boundaries.
33

In my 40 years experience working in this feld, I have found nothing that
has greater potential to unify knowledge than the idea of extraterrestrial intel-
ligence. Moreover, the appeal of the idea to students makes SETI an ideal tool
for implementing a unifed knowledge curriculum in schools, work already
being done at the SETI Institute and elsewhere.
32. Albert Harrison et al., The Role of the Social Sciences in SETI, in Tough, ed., When SETI
Succeeds, pp. 7185.
33. Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998);
Ben Finney, SETI, Consilience and the Unity of Knowledge, in Lemarchand and Meech, eds.,
Bioastronomy 99, pp. 641647; reprinted in Tough, ed., When SETI Succeeds, pp. 139144.
63
CHAPTER FOUR
A Tale of Two Analogues
Learning at a Distance from the
Ancient Greeks and Maya and the
Problem of Deciphering Extraterrestrial
Radio Transmissions
1
Ben Finney and Jerry Bentley
Preface
During the mid-1980s I spent a little over a year working in a trailer parked
near the huge wind tunnels at NASAs Ames Research Center on the shores
of San Francisco Bay. A sign written in large bold letters and displayed in one
of the trailers windowsET, Phone Homehinted that something out of
the ordinary might be going on inside. In fact, the trailer served as an overfow
ofce for NASAs fedgling SETI program, which was then developing the
means to detect radio signals hypothesized to have been sent by extraterrestrial
civilizations. I was there to work alongside SETI researchers, using my anthro-
pological background and knowledge to assess their rationale and procedures
for trying to establish contact with extraterrestrials, as well as to consider
the possible impacts on humanity if the enterprise succeeded. At that time I
had already conducted a number of unusual research projects, most recently
reconstructing a Polynesian voyaging canoe and sailing it over legendary
migration routes to resolve issues about Polynesian migrations. Yet working
at Ames alongside SETI astronomers, physicists, computer specialists, and
1. A version of this chapter was published earlier in a special issue of Acta Astronautica; see Ben
Finney and Jerry Bentley, A Tale of Two Analogues: Learning at a Distance from the Ancient
Greeks and Maya and the Problem of Deciphering Extraterrestrial Radio Transmissions, Acta
Astronautica 42, nos. 1012 (1998): 691696. The opening section here (Preface) is a new
addition, written by Ben Finney specically for this collection.
A Tale of Two Analogues
others in their daring quest to contact the ultimate others proved to be an
even more exotic and thought-provoking experience.
Te epiphany that had steered me indirectly toward SETI came in 1978
when I was writing up an experimental canoe voyage from Hawaii across the
equator to Tahiti, navigated without instruments or charts. By then linguists,
archaeologists, and others had made good progress in tracing the migration
of ancestral Polynesians from Southeast Asia into the open Pacifc, and our
voyaging research was beginning to provide data and insights supporting
the hypothesis that Polynesians had intentionally explored and settled the
Pacifcas opposed to the then-popular null hypothesis that their canoes
and navigation methods were so crude that they could only have been cast-
aways driven eastward by wind and current. Nonetheless, I realized that for
want of precise information on what the ancient voyagers actually thought,
said, and did, we would never know exactly why and how they pushed the
human frontier so far into the ocean. Tats when it hit me that if I was truly
interested in human migration into new habitats, and not just the Polynesian
experience, then I had an opportunity to study frsthand the beginnings of
a much more portentous migration that might eventually take humanity
beyond Earth and into the cosmos.
But I could hardly write a grant proposal to study space migration and
expect to get it funded by the National Science Foundation or any other
agency that supports anthropological research. Instead, I started reading the
literature on human spacefight and attending space conferences. At the 1980
congress of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) held in Rome, I
wandered into a fascinating symposium on SETI, a topic I had only vaguely
heard about. Papers by John Billingham, Jill Tarter, and others immediately
intrigued me because they ofered the prospect of humans expanding into
space intellectually rather than attempting the daunting (and, according to
Barney Oliver, energetically impossible) task of physically migrating to other
star systems. Afterward I corresponded with Billingham, the head of SETI
at Ames, about how I might participate in the NASA efort, and he recom-
mended that I apply for a grant from a program of the National Research
Council designed to allow university scientists to spend a year in govern-
ment laboratories. But just after I submitted my proposal, Wisconsin Senator
William Proxmire struck. He awarded SETI a Golden Fleece as a foolish
waste of government funds and contributed to the demise of NASAs pro-
gram. When funding was restored two years later, I was ofered a fellowship
and went to work in the SETI trailer.
As a resident anthropologist, I wanted to learn about SETI, much as I would
about any other culture I had chosen to study. In addition to studying the sci-
ence and technology involved in sending and receiving messages, above all I
65
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
sought to understand the ideas and logic behind searching for extraterrestrial
messages, deciphering any messages detected, and deriving useful information
from these. Tis meant reading the scholarly literature on SETI, which at that
time was sparse; attending SETI conferences; interviewing SETI scientists and
technicians; listening to them discuss issues among themselves; and present-
ing papers at SETI symposia about my research. However, I did not take the
antagonistic approach of so-called science studies as then practiced by a group
of sociologists bent upon exposing what they considered to be the epistemo-
logical navet and dangerous hubris of scientists. If anything, I was biased
in favor of SETI and those who were involved in what I regarded as a noble
quest. Nonetheless, I did fnd some of the SETI scientists thinking question-
ableespecially when they employed analogies based primarily on Western
experience to speculate about the nature of ET civilizations and behavior.
For example, according to SETI advocates, many of the civilizations that
might be contacted will be so many light-years away that the prospect of any
meaningful conversations with distant ET interlocutors would be very dim.
For the foreseeable future, we will therefore just listen. Furthermore, because
of NASAs vulnerability to public criticism, in the mid-1980s SETI research-
ers at Ames studiously avoided even talking about sending messages into the
cosmos. Tey feared that any such transmissions would be perceived by the
public as exposing Earth to potentially hostile aliens, and that citizens anxiet-
ies could, when expressed in letters to their representatives, bring the wrath
of Congress down on NASA. (Of course, as Frank Drake pointed out, we
were already giving our position away through powerful radar and television
transmissions.) Accordingly, these scientists went out of their way to emphasize
that they would attempt only to receive messages and not to transmit them.
For those who asked how it would be possible to learn anything from listen-
ing to messages sent tens, hundreds, or thousands of years ago, they had an
ingenious answer: But we have already had the experience of learning from the
ancient Greeks through one-way messages from the distant past. Tey were
referring to the transmission of classical Greek science and learning to Western
Europe in late medieval and Renaissance times through the intermediary of
Arab scholars and others who had studied and translated ancient Greek texts.
As much as I was intrigued by this analogy, I could not help but think that
the challenge faced by medieval Western Europeans learning at a distance from
ancient Greeks was trivial compared to the task of deciphering and understand-
ing interstellar messages. I thought that a more useful terrestrial analogy might
be derived from the eforts to decipher ancient scripts of cultures far removed
from the classical world I had a case in mind: the long struggle to translate the
hieroglyphs carved on ancient Maya temples and vividly painted on pottery
and pages of the few codices that survived Spanish colonization. While working
66
A Tale of Two Analogues
toward my doctorate in the early 1960s, I had studied ancient Maya culture
and the attempts to decipher the hieroglyphs. By then scholars had cracked the
Mayas numbering system and their elaborate calendrical cycles based on the
apparent movements of the Sun, Venus, and other heavenly bodies. Particularly
because some scholars were then speculating that Maya writing might turn
out to be primarily mathematical, calendrical, and astronomical-astrological in
nature, the Maya case seemed like a much closer parallel to SETI issues than
protracted ancient-to-medieval European knowledge transfers.
However, I didnt get around to investigating the Maya case until long after
I had left the SETI trailer and returned to my university duties in Hawaii.
In 1994 John Billingham asked me to present a paper at a SETI session to be
held later that year at the International Astronautical Federation congress in
Jerusalem. He suggested that I might address the analogy between SETI and
the delayed transfer of knowledge from ancient Greece to medieval Europe.
Well, I replied, I could, but I would rather focus on the Maya case, and
explained why. John agreed, so of I went to the library to catch up on the
latest advances in Mayan decipherment studies.
Indeed, I did fnd the Maya case relevant to SETI thinking but not at all
in the way I had previously imagined. Te expectations that Maya writing
would turn out to be primarily mathematical, calendrical, and astronomical
in content did not pan out. Instead it proved to be largely focused on the
histories of kings, ruling dynasties, and their wars. Furthermore, it became
apparent that a fundamental fallacy had delayed the translation of Maya
hieroglyphs, the same one that had for so long kept scholars from reading
Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. Tis was the assumption that the glyphs rep-
resented ideas as a whole independent of spoken language. In both cases, it
was not until scholars approached the glyphs as symbols for the phonemes
and morphemes of speech, studied the modern languages descended from
ancient Egyptian and Mayan, and discovered translation keys (such as Egypts
famous Rosetta Stone) that they were able to decipher the hieroglyphic texts. I
therefore wrote my paper as a cautionary tale for SETI scientists who believed
that extraterrestrial radio messages would be readily decipherable because they
would mainly be mathematical and scientifc in content and form.
Never have any of my conference papers caused such uproar. During the
question-and-answer period, I was lectured on prime numbers and physical
constants and told I ought to know that science and mathematics are uni-
versal languages that must be shared by any truly intelligent life-form. Jean
Heidmann, the ebullient astronomer who was chairing the session, inter-
jected that civilizations anxious to share their experience and knowledge
didnt need to send mathematical and scientifc primers. All they had to do
was transmit their encyclopedia, which other truly intelligent beings should
67
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
be able to understand with the aid of powerful computer algorithms. Only
at the end of the discussion did someone come to my defense, a semioti-
cian and computer specialist. Of course, he calmly observed, you need
a key to decipher a totally alien message. Nonetheless, Heidmann and the
rapporteurs of the session recommended that my paper be submitted for
publication in Acta Astronautica. Te reviewers recommended publication,
although one suggested that in focusing so much on the Maya case I had not
really explained the delayed transmission of knowledge from ancient Greece
to Western Europe. Accordingly, I recruited Jerry Bentley, the founding editor
of the Journal of International History and a historian who takes a global view
of human events, to analyze more fully the knowledge transfer from ancient
Greece to medieval Western Europe. Our joint paper, reprinted here with
minor revisions, was subsequently published in Acta Astronautica.
Introduction
Can encounters between terrestrial civilizations help us think about making
radio contact with extraterrestrial civilizations? Te commonly suggested
examples of the brutal impact of technologically powerful invading peoples
on indigenous populations do not directly apply since radio contact would
be intellectual only. Tere is, however, a type of encounter between terrestrial
civilizations that occurs without any physical contact and involves the passive
transmission of knowledge from one civilization to another without any pos-
sibility of an actual conversation. Here on Earth such encounters have occurred
whenever scholars have been able to decipher ancient textsbe they written in
books, engraved on stone or clay, or painted on potteryand learn from the
extinct civilizations that had produced them. One such encounter occurred
during medieval times when Western European scholars began to learn about
ancient Greek philosophy and science from translated texts. Since the knowl-
edge gained from these texts is said to have stimulated Western learning and the
development of modern science, SETI theorists have proposed this case as an
analogue for how we might intellectually beneft from deciphering and study-
ing radio transmissions from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization without
(or before) attempting two-way communication.
2
2. J. L. Heilbron, J. Conway, K. Cullers, B. Finney, and S. Dick, History and SETI, in Social
Implications of the Detection of an Extraterrestrial Civilization: A Report of the Workshops on
the Cultural Aspects of SETI Held in October 1991, May 1992, and September 1992 at Santa
Cruz, California, ed. J. Billingham et al. (Mountain View, CA: SETI Institute, 1990), pp. 126.
68
A Tale of Two Analogues
From Ancient Greece to Medieval Western Europe
During classical times, Greek learning spread throughout the Mediterranean
basin. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, the
study of Greek philosophy and science largely disappeared in Western Europe,
along with an understanding of the Greek language itself. Knowledge of
classical Greek philosophy and science was fully maintained, however, in the
Byzantine and Arab worlds. Greek scholars of the Byzantine Empire con-
tinued to study classical texts, and until the fall of the empire in AD 1453,
they maintained a lively tradition of commenting on classical authorities and
adapting them to contemporary needs. Meanwhile, beginning in the 7th
century AD, Arab peoples encountered classical Greek thoughtalong with
classical Persian and Indian learningas they expanded to the north, east,
and west under the banner of Islam. Muslim scholars translated the works of
Aristotle, Plato, and other classical Greek scholars into Arabic, and during
the next half millennium sought to reconcile Islamic values with the secular
traditions of Greek philosophy and science, as well as with Indian medicine
and mathematics.
During the medieval period, Western European scholars were therefore
able to turn to the Byzantine Empire and centers of Islamic scholarship
in Sicily and Spain to recover knowledge of classical Greek learning.
3
For
example, Islamic scholarship played a major role in bringing Aristotle to the
attention of Roman Catholic philosophers and theologians. Although the
Neoplatonic thoughts of Ibn Sina, or Avicenna (AD 9801037), commanded
the most respect in the Arab world, the works of those Islamic philosophers
who looked to Aristotle for inspiration suggested the possibility of a powerful
synthesis between analytical thought and religious faith. Te most infuential
was Ibn Rushd (AD 11261198), also known as Averroes, who produced
voluminous commentaries on Aristotle. Ibn Rushd spent most of his career
in Cordoba, Seville, and Marrakesh, where Jewish scholars became familiar
with his work. Tey discussed it widely among themselves and helped make
it known among Christian scholars, some of whom undertook their own
translations of the texts from Arabic to Castilian. Having thus become aware
of the explanatory power of Aristotles thought, Christian philosophers and
3. R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and Its Beneciaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1954); J. M. Hussey, Church and Learning in the Byzantine Empire (New York: Russell
and Russell, 1963), pp. 8671185; F. E. Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs (New York: New York
University Press, 1968); J. R. Hayes, The Genius of Arab Civilization: Source of Renaissance,
3rd ed. (New York: New York University Press, 1992).
69
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
theologians embarked on the remarkable venture of scholasticismthe efort
to synthesize Aristotle and Christianity.
Direct knowledge of Aristotle in Western Europe came as much from
Greek as from Islamic sources. Te Latin translations of Aristotle from Islamic
Sicily and Spain, made mostly by Jewish scholars, were less than satisfactory
since they passed Aristotles original Greek through both Arabic and Latin fl-
ters. Tus, whenever possible, Roman Catholic theologians sought to obtain
translations of Aristotle made directly from Greek texts; St. Tomas Aquinas
(AD 12251274), for example, commissioned many such works. Many of
these translations came from the Byzantine Empire, while others came from
Greek texts preserved in the libraries of Islamic Sicily and Spain. Nevertheless,
translations from Arabic remained in circulation until Renaissance human-
ists prepared fresh versions from Greek texts during the 15th, 16th, and
17thcenturies.
Islamic scholarship also stimulated Western European interest in classi-
cal Greek science. In Sicily, Spain, and the Middle East, Western Europeans
learned about Islamic science and medicine, which drew on both Greek and
Indian traditions. Tey called for translations of Ptolemy, Galen, Hippocrates,
and other classical scientists. Again, polyglot Jewish scholars and transla-
tors from various schools prepared many of these translations, working from
original Greek texts when available and otherwise from Arabic translations
of the Greek originals. Te understanding of classical Greek science that
resulted from these eforts profoundly infuenced Western Europe from the
12th century through the 16th century, by which time, however, Copernicus
and Vesalius were on the verge of launching Western European science and
medicine on altogether new trajectories that were to surpass scholastic studies
based on classical Greek texts.
Does the role played by this roundabout transmission of classical Greek
learning to medieval Western Europe in stimulating the development of
learning and science there provide a useful analogue for thinking about the
possible impact of texts transmitted by advanced extraterrestrials on modern
science and learning? At best the answer would seem to be a highly qualifed
maybe. To state the obvious, the ancient Greek philosophers and scientists;
their Arab, Byzantine, and Jewish successors and translators; and the Western
European scholars who received this learning were close cultural cousins of
the same biological species, who could readily learn each others languages
and decipher each others writing systems. By contrast, the gulf that would
separate usbarring some extraordinary convergencefrom any extraterres-
trials whose radio transmissions might be received would surely be immense.
Tis suggests that if we are to employ terrestrial analogues for learning from
extraterrestrial civilizations, we should examine cases around the globe in
70
A Tale of Two Analogues
which the cultural/linguistic gap between long-dead scholars and later ones
who attempt to decipher and learn from old texts is signifcantly greater than
that between ancient Greek writers and medieval Western European readers.
Breaking the Maya Code
Te saga of attempts by European and American scholars to decipher the
inscriptions left by the ancient Maya and then enter into their intellectual
world provides just such a case to consider, for the cultural gulf between
19th- and 20th-century students of the ancient Maya and the ancient Maya
themselves is about as great as can be found on this globe between civiliza-
tions past and present. Te Maya are thought to be descendants of northern
Asian peoples whose colonization of the Americas started some 20,000 or
more years ago. Well after these emigrants had spread from Alaska to Tierra
del Fuego, high cultures based on intensive agriculture arose in the Andes,
along the west coast of South America, and in the Mesoamerican region
of Mexico and Central America. Although some have posited Chinese or
Southeast Asian infuence on New World high cultures, most scholars hold
that they developed independently from those of the Old World.
Archaeologists call the civilization from which come the bulk of the known
Mayan inscriptions Classic Maya. It fourished in the lowlands of south-
ern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and western Honduras from about AD 250
to around AD 900. Scattered throughout this region are the architectural
remainsconsisting of temples, pyramids, stelae, and other structuresof
numerous administrative and ceremonial centers. Te societies that built
and occupied these centers are generally described as primitive kingdoms or
incipient city-states, ruled over by divine kings and often at war with one
another. Te autochthonous development of Classic Maya civilization came
to an end by the 9th century. By that time one after another of the Maya
kingdoms had collapsed, and their central places were abandoned to the tropi-
cal forest. Exhaustion of tropical soils by the burgeoning populations of these
kingdoms, climate shift, peasant revolt, and invasion from highland Mexico
have all been proposed, singly or in combination, to account for this collapse.
During the post-classic period, Maya peoples continued living throughout
the region but without the great centers and high culture of the classic era,
except in the north of the Yucatan Peninsula, where Mexican-infuenced
civilization briefy fourished until the time of the Spanish conquest.
Despite the Spanish takeover and the subsequent impact of imported dis-
eases, direct colonization, and cultural suppression, some three million Maya
now live in Mexico and Central America. Most of them still speak Mayan
71
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
languages and retain, if on an attenuated level, many of the belief structures,
though not the scripts, of their ancestors.
4
In the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s
explorers from Europe and the United States began to discover, with the
help of Maya guides, long-abandoned ceremonial centers of the classic era,
which by then had been covered by the tropical forests for centuries. Carved
in relief on the tall stelae and on the walls and lintels of some buildings, the
explorers found what appeared to be elaborate inscriptions composed of a
long series of hieroglyphs. Tese inscriptions, plus similar symbols painted
on plaster-covered bark pages of the few codices that escaped destruction
by the ravages of time and of zealous Spanish priests, and those painted on
excavated pottery urns, constitute the entire corpus of textual materials over
which scholars have been laboring for a century and a half.
Only recently, however, have these researchers succeeded in cracking
the Maya code. Why has it taken so long? According to Mayanist Michael
Coe, scholars were misled by their belief that the hieroglyphs (often referred
to simply as glyphs) with which the Maya wrote were ideographic in
the sense that each conveyed an idea directly to the mind without regard
to speech.
5
Tis same ideographic myth also held up the decipherment
of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. In the 3rd century AD the Neoplatonist
philosopher Plotinus marveled at how the ancient Egyptians could express
their thoughts directly in their seemingly pictographic hieroglyphs without
the intervention of letters, words, and sentences. Each separate sign, he
proclaimed, is in itself a piece of knowledge, a piece of wisdom, a piece of
reality, immediately present.
6
Tese words, republished in Florence the year
Columbus reached the New World, infamed the Renaissance imagination
about the wisdom of ancient Egypt, where people could express their thoughts
in pictorial form without the intervention of writing. Athanasius Kircher, a
German Jesuit who taught mathematics and Hebrew in Renaissance Rome,
made widely admired translations of Egyptian hieroglyphs, which, as the
Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner put it, exceed all bounds in their imagina-
tive folly. Without a true key to the hieroglyphs, Kircher could arbitrarily
assign any meaning to them he wished.
7
Not until the 1820s did the brilliant linguist Jean-Franois Champollion
fnally show the way toward translating the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Using the
4. M. D. Coe, The Maya, 5th ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993).
5. M. D. Coe, Breaking the Maya Code (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992).
6. Quoted here from M. Pope, The Story of Decipherment (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), p. 21.
7. Pope, The Story of Decipherment, pp. 2833; A. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 3rd ed. (Oxford:
Grifth Institute, 1957), pp. 1112.
72
A Tale of Two Analogues
newly discovered Rosetta Stoneon which in 196 BC the same message had
been inscribed in Hieroglyphic Egyptian, Demotic Egyptian, and Greek
and his considerable linguistic skills, he was able to read the hieroglyphs as
a phonetically written form of a once-spoken language, not as a collection
of ideographs divorced from speech.
8
Hence, in a classic work on the newly
discovered Maya ruins, John Lloyd Stephens wrote of the great classic Maya
center of Copan: One thing I believe, that its history is graven on its monu-
ments. No Champollion has yet brought to them the energies of his inquiring
mind. Who shall read them?
9
Te Abb Brasseur de Bourbourg made one of the frst attempts. He had
discovered a manuscript written in the 16th century by Diego de Landa,
the bishop of Yucatan, just after its conquest by Spain. In its pages Brasseur
thought he had found a key for deciphering Maya writing. De Landa had
redrawn the glyphs and transliterated into Spanish the names of the days in
the Maya 260-day calendar and the names of the months of their 360-day
solar year. In addition, he recorded, or thought he did, the Maya symbols
for each letter of the Spanish alphabet. However, whereas Brasseur was on
the right track in his calendrical translations, he was more wrong than right
when he interpreted the noncalendrical glyphs as phonetic letters of a Mayan
alphabet instead of what they apparently were: attempts by de Landas Maya
informants to fnd a Maya symbol that, when spoken, more or less matched
the Spanish pronunciation of each letter in the Spanish alphabet.
10
Whereas Champollion had been an expert linguist and knew Coptic,
the modern Egyptian language descended from ancient Egyptian, neither
Brasseur nor any of the other would-be epigraphers who followed him had
the requisite linguistic skills and knowledge of Mayan languages to be the
New World Champollion. Many of them even denied that it was necessary to
know linguistics or any Mayan language because they believed that the glyphs
were not symbolic of speech but were pure ideographs, as had previously been
claimed for Egyptian hieroglyphs. As late as 1950, Sir Eric Tompson main-
tained that the non-numerical/calendrical Maya glyphs did not express any-
thing as mundane as language but instead symbolized mystical-mythological
8. J.-F. Champollion, Prcis du Systme Hiroglyphique des Anciens gyptiens (Paris: Imprimerie
Impriale, 1824).
9. John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, 2 vols.
(London: John Murray, 1841), vol. 1, p. 159.
10. C. . Brasseur de Bourbourg, Relation des Choses de Yucatn (Paris: Durand, 1864); C. .
Brasseur de Bourbourg, Manuscrit Troana: tude sur le Systme Graphique et la Langue des
Mayas (Paris: Imprimerie Impriale, 18691870); Coe, Breaking the Maya Code, pp. 101106.
73
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
concepts.
11
His revival of such Neoplatonist nonsense might seem laughable
except for the fact that his power and infuence among Mayanists of his day
enabled him to single-handedly block for several decades all attempts to read
the Mayan script as a written form of once-spoken languages.
12
Two years after Tompsons pronouncement, however, Yuri Knorozov,
a brilliant Russian epigrapher outside the circle of Western European and
American Mayanists, published a stunning paper that pointed the way toward
using linguistic analysis and knowledge of Mayan languages to decipher the
inscriptions.
13
He found that the principles of Mayan writing were similar
to those operating in other hieroglyphic systems. However pictographic they
might seem (and probably were in origin), the glyphs had come to stand for
either phonetic-syllabic signs or morphemes (the smallest meaningful units
of speech) and could be read with the help of knowledge gained from the
study of surviving Mayan languages. Since then a new generation of Mayanist
scholarslinguists, art historians, archaeologists, and ethnographers, as well
as specialized epigraphershave followed Knorozovs lead and have begun
to read the inscriptions with some facility and to learn about Mayan politics,
wars, religious practices, and other facets of this fascinating culture.
Michael Coe, whose analysis I have followed here, emphasizes how critical
the linguistic approach has been to this decipherment, as it has been to every
other deciphered ancient script. He even goes so far as to state categorically that
no script has ever been broken, that is, actually translated, unless the language
itself is known and understood.
14
Coe ofers as a case in point the inscriptions
of the Etruscan inhabitants of central Italy before the rise of the Roman state.
Tere are over 10,000 funerary inscriptions in Etruscan written in a script
similar to that of the early Greeks and, like Greek, ultimately derived from
Phoenician writing. But no one has discovered a Rosetta Stone with parallel
texts in Etruscan and Latin or any other known language.
15
Apparently, the
Romans never bothered to describe and analyze the language of their Etruscan
subjects. As a result, declares Coe, Etruscan can be read, but it has never
been translated.
16
Tose who might object that Chinese writing, with its
11. J. E. Thompson, Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute
of Washington, 1950), p. 295.
12. Coe, Breaking the Maya Code, pp. 124144.
13. Y. V. Knorozov, Drevnyaya pismennost Tsentralnoy Ameriki [Ancient Writings of Central
America], Sovetskaya Etnograya 3, no. 2 (1952): 100118.
14. Coe, Breaking the Maya Code, p. 44.
15. C. Holden, Etruscan Tablet Interpreted, Science 269, no. 5226 (1995): 925.
16. Coe, Breaking the Maya Code, p. 44.
74
A Tale of Two Analogues
tens of thousands of characters, must surely be ideographic should read John
DeFranciss Te Chinese Language, in which DeFrancis demystifes Chinese
characters by demonstrating that these fguresdespite their pictographic
beginningshave evolved to be primarily phonetic-semantic symbols.
17
Discussion
Te Maya case appears to undermine SETI scientists hopes of actually trans-
lating the messages they are working to detect. If we have been unable to
translate ancient human scripts without some knowledge of the spoken lan-
guage they represent, what prospects have we of being able to comprehend
radio transmissions emanating from other worlds for which we have neither
Rosetta Stones nor any knowledge of the languages they encode?
One way out of this dilemma of deciphering absolutely alien languages
that is commonly suggested in the SETI literature revolves around two
assumptions: frst, that advanced intelligent beings capable of communicat-
ing by radio must share with us the same basic logical processes and employ
numbers and understand physics at least as well as we do; and, second, that
those extraterrestrials anxious to establish interstellar radio contact would
deliberately avoid natural languages and develop artifcial ones based on
presumably shared reasoning processes and scientifc knowledge. In 1960
Hans Freudenthal composed a Lingua Cosmica (Lincos) that was, he said,
based solely on pure logic and was therefore decipherable by other intelligent
beings.
18
Mathematician C. L. DeVito and linguist R. T. Oehrle subsequently
proposed that beings from diferent star systems who have developed radio
telescopes, and who therefore must share a basic understanding of mathemat-
ics and science, could begin to communicate in an artifcial language built on
such fundamental scientifc facts as the nature of chemical elements, the melt-
ing and boiling points of pure substances, and the properties of gases. Tey
asserted that these putative interstellar interlocutors could then progress to
such basic physical units as grams, calories, kelvins, and so on, after which, as
DeVito and Oehrle put it, more interesting information can be exchanged.
19
17. J. DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984).
18. H. Freudenthal, Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse: Part 1 (Amsterdam:
North-Holland Publishing, 1960).
19. C. L. DeVito and R. T. Oehrle, A Language Based on the Fundamental Facts of Science,
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 43, no. 12 (1990): 561568.
75
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Te necessary assumption behind such an argument is that of the psy-
chic unity of all intelligent species, or at least of all those who have entered
a radio-communicative stage. Rather than directly challenging this crucial
assumption, as have some commentators on the SETI enterprise,
20
let us
assume enough convergent scientifc intelligence that beings from dispa-
rate star systems could begin to recognize transmitted symbols for numbers,
physical and chemical constants, and the like. Would this shared knowledge
necessarily lead to more interesting information? Would it be possible to
progress from mathematical and physical verities to discussions of biologies,
cultures, and histories? Might it even be possible, as many SETI advocates
hope, for such young civilizations as ours to learn from older and presumably
wiser civilizations how to survive technological adolescence?
A closer examination of the Maya case may again yield an illuminating
parallel. Brasseur de Bourbourgs early success in understanding the rudi-
ments of Maya numerical notation and calendrical reckoning eventually led
to a comprehension of Maya mathematics, which are based on vigesimal
numeration symbolized by dots indicating one and bars indicating fve and
a zero marker, as well as recognition of their facility for plotting calendrical
cycles of the Sun, Moon, and Venus.
21
But this breakthrough did not lead to
the translation of the bulk of the Maya texts. On the contrary, it seems to have
impeded the full translation of Maya because it reinforced the idiographic
fallacy that all the glyphs represented ideas without any relationship to lan-
guage. Tis fallacy led to some interesting ideas, such as the notion that an
elaborately carved and inscribed altar from the ceremonial center of Copan
portrayed the proceedings of an astronomy congress devoted to correlating
solar and lunar cycles. Linguistically oriented scholars have since discovered,
however, that the carvings on this artifact actually represent the 16 dynastic
rulers of Copan and their reigns.
We have presented this terrestrial tale not to suggest the impossibility of
deciphering messages from extraterrestrials. Rather, we ofer it as a warning
against a facile acceptance of the analogy between SETI and the delayed
20. See, for example, W. H. McNeill, Remarks, in Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence:
CETI, ed. Carl Sagan (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1973), pp. 342346; J. C. Baird, The
Inner Limits of Outer Space (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987), p. 133;
and A. Westin, Radioastronomy as Epistemology: Some Philosophical Reections on the
Contemporary Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, The Monist 70, no. 1 (1988): 88100.
21. F. G. Lounsbury, Maya Numeration, Computation, and Calendrical Astronomy, in Dictionary of
Scientic Biography, ed. C. C. Gillespie, 15 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner, 1980), vol. 15,
pp. 759818.
76
A Tale of Two Analogues
transmission of classical Greek learning to Western Europe. We must think
about the formidable prerequisites of deciphering extraterrestrial messages
and consider the possibility that whole domains of knowledge may remain
opaque to us, despite our best eforts, for a very long time. If terrestrial ana-
logues are to be employed in relation to SETI, then we should explore the
wide range of human experience around the globe and not focus solely on
familiar cases that appear to reinforce our most earnest hopes.
77
CHAPTER FIVE
Beyond Linear B
The Metasemiotic Challenge
of Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Richard Saint-Gelais
A Semiotic Outlook on SETI
Communication, as we all know, is a touchy business between human
beings. So there is reason to doubt that it would be an easy thing across
the universe. In this essay I will try to describe a set of theoretical problems
that might afect communication with extraterrestrial intelligences. I will
also attempt to map the chief difculties that arise when we look at the
phenomenon (or more exactly the hypothesis) of communication between
what will be, in all likelihood, profoundly diferent species. Tese difcul-
ties are often expressed in terms of epistemic and sensorial incompatibility
between interstellar interlocutors who will belong to species and cultures
so diferent that the common ground necessary to communication could
be very small indeed. We do not know whether extraterrestrial beings will
perceive and conceptualize their reality in ways similar to ours, using the
same cognitive categories, or even whether they will communicate through
visual and acoustic channels.
I should state at the outset that my position is similar to the epistemic
skepticism just mentioned. But my perspective will be slightly diferent from,
though not incompatible with, the epistemic perspective. I will apply the
theories and methods of semiotic analysis to the problem of interstellar com-
munication, focusing on signs, language, meaning, and interpretation. A
simplebut simplisticconception of communication defnes it as a pro-
duction phase followed by a reception phase, an encoding and then a decoding
of a given meaning through a message that is seen as a vehicle for this content.
But understanding a message is not extracting something physically present in
the signs. It entails, rather, the integration of these signs into an interpretive
frame that enables the recipient to give them meaningsmeanings that the
Beyond Linear B
recipient has to elaborate, not extract. Take, for instance, a very simple and
frequently encountered sign that consists of two equilateral triangles placed
base to base and pointing in opposite directions, one left, the other right;
these two triangles are sometimes separated by a vertical line. As repeated
experiences with undergraduate students have shown me, a reproduction of
this sign on the blackboard meets only with perplexity until I ofer them the
clue Suppose this is something you see in an elevator, providing an interpre-
tive context that allows them to recognize the triangles as the conventional
symbol for opening doors.
An important part of the interpretive context is knowledge of the language
to which the signs belong. Semioticians have insisted that meaning depends
on the code or system used to interpret the sign. For instance, a vertical stroke
may mean, among other things, the number one (when interpreted as part
of the arithmetical notation system), the frst-person pronoun (when taken
as an English word), the torso of a man or woman (when viewed as part of
a matchstick fgure), or the idea of verticality. In a bottom-up model of
interpretation, this processing of individual signs is a frst step, followed by
more complex operations requiring a syntactic competence, i.e., a practical
knowledge of the rules governing the combinations of signs.
1
As any student
of a foreign language notices, though, understanding a sentence is not simply
a matter of adding up the dictionary defnitions of individual words in that
sentence. It calls for a grasp of the interrelationships among these words and
of the function each plays in the structure of the sentence. What makes this
operation rather complex is that it is not as linear as the bottom-up model
suggests: interpreters do not process isolated meanings before asking how
to coordinate them into a global signifcation; a tacit hypothesis about the
global syntactic pattern already guides the identifcation of the meaning and
function of words. So there is a constant oscillation between bottom-up and
top-down operations, in which inferences about a global and abstract pattern
(within a sentence, text, or narrative) guide the expectation and recognition of
the successive elements that make up this structure. For instance, the French
word loupe may be either a noun (meaning magnifying glass) or a form of
the colloquial verb louper (meaning to miss). But the reader of a sentence
in which the word loupe appears rarely wonders which of these meanings is
1. Bottom-up (or data-driven) models of cognition assume that the processing of information
starts with fundamental units, from which higher-order structures are inferred. The opposite
strategy is the top-down (or theory-driven) processing model, where a hypothesis about the
global structure (a sentence pattern, for instance) guides the treatment of lower-level units. On
both strategies, see Jerry Fodor, The Modularity of Mind (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1983).
79
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
being invoked: the syntactic context, and what he infers from it, leads him to
recognize the correct meaning instantly. Sherlock Holmes examina le sol avec
une loupe: Sherlock Holmes examined the ground with a magnifying glass;
Il loupe tous ses examens: he funks all of his exams.
Te consequences these considerations have for interstellar communica-
tion are quite obvious. Such communication, if it is to be successful, must
overcome the difculties inherent in an exchange where sender and recipi-
ent do not share a common language; the latter cannot rely on an already
established language competence with which to work out the meaning of the
message but must instead start with the message itself and try to infer from
it, conjecturally, the lexical and syntactic rules that endow it with meaning.
2

From the senders point of view, the challenge is to conceive a message that
will include, somehow, the interpretive context necessary for it to make sense.
In other words, the sender must, apparently, produce this semiotic paradox:
a self-interpreting message.
Te difculty is greater still because, even before the recipients tackle the
intricacies of interpretation, they must identify the message as a semiotic
(rather than natural) phenomenon. Normally, in a shared cultural context,
this identifcation does not require conscious thought. For instance, each
language selects an array of phonetic or graphemic patterns that count as
signs so that users of this language know not only where to look for but
how to easily recognize articulated signs when they see (or hear) them. For
instance, the Turkish alphabet distinguishes between dotted and dotless I,
treating each of these characters as a signifcant linguistic unit. In English,
where no such distinction holds, a dotless I would seem to be merely the
result of carelessness on the part of the writer. So a sign must not only be
correctly interpreted but must also be recognized as a sign in the frst place.
When sender and recipient share an interpretive context (modes of percep-
tion, type and structure of language, cultural assumptions, and so on), this
context functions as an implicit cue, as a kind of meta-sign signifying this is
a sign. It is precisely this semiotic confdence that becomes problematic with
interstellar communication, in which sender and recipient are compelled to
question the invisible assumptions that underlie the production and reception
2. So this would seem a radical case of bottom-up treatment of information, but we must not
forget that eventual recipients would have their own abstract cognitive frames, which they
would tentatively (or unconsciously) mobilize, in a top-down fashion, when processing our
messages. This would also apply to our own attempts at deciphering interstellar messages, as
Stanislaw Lem brilliantly shows in his science-ction novel His Masters Voice, trans. Michael
Kandel (San Francisco: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983).
80
Beyond Linear B
of signs. More precisely, it confronts the sender with the challenge of devising
messages that include what is normally outside messages: a sign that acts as an
index (this is a sign) and, to some extent, as code (it must be interpreted that
way) to the whole message. Creating such a message is no small task. It implies
the conception of messages that incorporate self-interpreting devices, signs
that do not require an external interpretive system in order to be correctly
identifed and interpreted. We may therefore say that communication with
extraterrestrial intelligences entails, per se, a form of altruism, an altruism
that is not necessarily expressed on the level of content
3
but is embodied in
the senders endeavor to facilitate the recipients task by trying both to see
the message from the perspective of a hypothetical other and to imagine the
obstacles that such a recipient may face. Tis is a discreet, albeit strong, form
of collaboration, one that goes beyond the expression of altruistic values or
the sharing of information, because it is the messages confguration rather
than its content that anticipates potential difculties at the recipients end
and tries to attenuate them.
Deciphering Ancient Scripts
Te question, of course, is: to what extent is this possible? A comparison with
the opposite, noncooperative situationthe deciphering of coded messages
or inscriptions written in extinct languagesmay provide a fresh look at the
problems involved.
4
3. For a detailed proposal along this line, see Douglas A. Vakoch and Michael Mantessa, An
Algorithmic Approach to Communicating Reciprocal Altruism in Interstellar Messages: Drawing
Analogies Between Social and Astrophysical Phenomena, Acta Astronautica 68, nos. 34
(2011): 459475.
4. Kathryn Denning makes a similar point: If we can effectively isolate what makes a message
decipherable, then we can compose messages with those anticryptographic properties in
mind; see her Learning To Read: Interstellar Message Decipherment from Archaeological
and Anthropological Perspectives, chapter 6 in this volume. On the decipherment of ancient
languages, see Johannes Friedrich, Extinct Languages, trans. Frank Gaynor (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1957); John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B (1958; rpt.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Andrew Robinson, Lost Languages. The
Enigma of the Worlds Undeciphered Scripts (2002; rpt. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2009).
For an account of a famous case of decipherment, see F. H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp, eds.,
Code Breakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
81
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
At frst glance, the difculties involved in the decipherment of coded
messages or ancient scripts suggest a rather pessimistic view of the interstellar
communication challenge, for if it took specialists many years to solve the
enigma of writing systems devised by human beings (without, in the latter
case, any intent to conceal the meaning of the utterances), it seems unrealistic
to imagine that our messages could be easily understood by beings whose cul-
ture, history, and even biology will difer vastly from ours. How can we be sure
that some well-meaning interpreter will not misread our intended message?
5
On a semiotic level, the similarity between the three kinds of situations is
readily apparent. Deciphering inscriptions in unknown languages or messages
in secret codes implies coping with strings of signs without having any prior
knowledge of the encoding rules, so recognizing these rules become one of the
ends (instead of the means, as is usually the case) of the interpretive process.
Te decipherer of unknown languages tries to establish the phonetic and/or
semantic value of symbols. Te decipherer of secret messages seeks to identify
the principle governing the replacement and/or permutation of letters. So
both activities can be compared to the reception of an interstellar message
and the task of interpreting it without having a prior idea of the encoding
rules, if any, governing the production of the signals.
I use the word signal instead of sign because at the early stage of interpre-
tation, decipherers must still identify the relevant semiotic units. Tey are
confronted with signalsi.e., material manifestations of some kind (strokes
on clay tablets, microwaves of a certain frequency)that may be signs.
6
A
sign is more abstract in nature: it is a semiotic confguration that is relatively
independent of the concrete signals that embody it because it is defned by
a limited number of relevant features, whereas the signal that manifests it
exhibits supplementaryand, from the point of view of the code, unnec-
essaryfeatures. Te word please may be shouted or whispered; it may be
pronounced with an Oxford or a French accent; it is always the same word,
the same linguistic sign. For someone who does not know the code, however,
nothing in the utterance indicates whether the relevant feature here is not
5. Chadwicks account of the decipherment of Linear B (The Decipherment of Linear B, pp.
2632) is particularly useful in that it relates not only the successive breakthroughs that nally
led to the solution but the sad story of failed attempts, some by distinguished scholars who
were so convinced of the validity of their initial hypothesis that they forced it on the material to
be deciphered.
6. In information theory, the term signal corresponds to the sign vehicle of semiotics. This
signal or information vehicleis opposed to the sign since it is only its physical embodiment
(Winfred Nth, Handbook of Semiotics [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995], p. 80).
82
Beyond Linear B
instead the whispering. To recognize a given sign from its signal is one of
the feats that are accomplished automatically and unconsciously by those
mastering the code but which become uncertain and difcult for those who
do not. Tis is precisely the case when the frst steps are taken toward under-
standing an unknown script, as John Chadwick shows in this passage from
Te Decipherment of Linear B:
[E. L. Bennetts] outstanding contribution [to the decipherment
of Linear B] is the establishment of the signary; the recognition of
variant forms and the distinction of separate signs. How difcult
the task is only those who have tried can tell. It is easy enough for
us to recognize the same letter in our alphabet as written by half a
dozen diferent people, despite the use of variant forms. But if you
do not know what is the possible range of letters, nor the sound
of the words they spell, it is impossible to be sure if some of the
rare ones are separate letters or mere variants.
7
At frst glance, the remarkable achievements of Champollion, Georg
Friedrich Grotefend, and others seem to contradict the thesis that the under-
standing of signs depends on prior familiarity with a languages underlying
code. Were these men not able to decipher the hitherto unreadable hiero-
glyphs and cuneiform? Without underestimating their exploits, we should
note that they did, in fact, start with some knowledge and (eventually valid)
assumptions. First and foremost, they knew that they were dealing with
human artifacts, signs made by human beings who shared with them a wide
range of anthropological and cultural notions and categories. Some of these
shared characteristics may remain entirely unnoticed as long as we are steeped
in a given culture or semiotic context. Let us take, for instance, the kinds of
writing systems human cultures have developed. It is possible to determine,
just from the number of diferent characters a language possesses, the type of
writing system that underlies it. If there are between 20 and 40 characters, it
is an alphabetical system; if there are approximately 100 characters, we have
a syllabic system in which each symbol transcribes a syllable (e.g., ta, te, ti,
to). Ideographic systems require many more than 100 characters: Mandarin,
for instance, has at least 60,000. So it is possible, provided enough inscrip-
tions have been found, to identify the type of writing system even before it
is deciphered. Tis is a nice example of what Charles Sanders Peirce called
an abduction, a piece of reasoning that takes a startling fact and extrapolates
7. Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B, p. 39.
83
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
a more or less bold guess from it.
8
But this guess is undeniably informed by
the fact that we humans have used these three kinds of writing systems. We
cannot expect all writing systems in the universe to follow these lines, if only
because the phonological apparatus of extraterrestrial beings may be quite
diferent from ours; their languages may have more or fewer phonetic units
than ours or may rest on a physiological basis unrelated to articulated sound.
It is not at all certain that extraterrestrial civilizations use alphabetical systems
of notation; nor can we assume, even supposing they do use alphabets, that
their signaries include a similar number of units to ours.
Another crucial help for the decipherers of extinct human languages comes
from the foothold that the decipherer can obtain from bilingual documents
(e.g., the Rosetta Stone) and/or from identifable proper names (of kings
and countries, for instance). Since we cannot use the bilingual method (we
would have to know an extraterrestrial language already) and proper names
would be unrecognizable, the comparison remains an imperfect one. But we
may draw more encouragement from cases in which the decipherment was
successful even though no bilingual inscriptions could be found and in which
both the language and the characters were unknown. Te most famous of
these is the case of Linear B, a writing system found on clay tablets on the
island of Crete, deciphered by Michael Ventris in the 1950s on the basis of
important groundwork laid by Alice Kober.
As Kober had done before him, Ventris used a purely formal method, group-
ing together words with the same beginning and then deducingor rather
abductingwhich grammatical variations the diferent endings corresponded
to (e.g., gender, number, etc.). Eventually he produced a grid on which the
phonetic value of each sign was recorded. Tis grid led to Ventriss unexpected
discovery that Linear B symbols transcribed a very ancient form of Greek.
9
Tis conclusion to the story undermines an initially promising com-
parison between ancient scripts and extraterrestrial communication. Ventris
did not know in advance what the language behind Linear B was, but of
course he could recognize it, however diferent it was from Classical Greek,
when he saw iti.e., when enough evidence was accumulated to reveal
the relationship. We cannot, of course, expect such recognition across inter-
stellar distances.
8. Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis. Deduction proves
that something must be; Induction shows that something actually is operative; Abduction
merely suggests that something may be (Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, 8 vols.
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965], vol. 5, p. 106).
9. See Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B, pp. 4066.
84
Beyond Linear B
Peirces Three Categories of Signs
My discussion of unknown languages has so far touched upon only one category
of signs, namely, conventional signs. So it seems appropriate to look at a more
comprehensive view, such as the one proposed at the end of the 19th century
by Charles Sanders Peirce, who is now considered, along with the Swiss lin-
guist Ferdinand de Saussure, as one of the two founding fathers of semiotics.
Peirces model encompasses a larger array of signs than does Saussures, which
is essentially preoccupied with verbal signs and so cannot account for images,
traces, and so on. Te generality of Peirces classifcation is thus more suited to
situations in which we may presume neither what kind of signs our extraterres-
trial correspondents will send or expect to receive nor what kind of conception
they may entertain regarding meaningful communication.
Peirce distinguishes among three types of signs: index, icon, and symbol.
An index is a sign that has a causal link, or at least a contact, with its object.
For instance, a footprint in the snow is an index of the foot that made it and,
by extension, of the presence of someone walking in a certain direction. (An
experienced interpreter of footprintsa hunter or a detective, for instance
may determine more characteristics, such as the approximate weight of the
animal or person responsible for a given trace.) An example of the weaker
relation, contact, would be an arrow in a road sign: the direction of the arrow
is an index of the portion of space at which it points.
Te second category of signs is that of icon. It is variously defned as a sign
having a relationship of similarity with the object it depicts or sharing some
(but not all) of the objects properties. Te sharing of properties defnition
of icons suggests that a recipient could, by observing an iconic sign, arrive at
some conclusions concerning the features of the object depicted. By contrast,
the similarity defnition leads to a less optimistic outlook: similarity rests
on a form of convention,
10
and we cannot know whether the recipients share
any of our pictorial habits and principles. Our images could very well seem
transparent to us while appearing opaque to othersincluding, as we know,
human beings from other cultures and time periods.
We come fnally to the third Peircean category, symbol. Symbols are signs
that refer to their object only by means of a convention (or, as Peirce puts it,
a Law). Tese are often called arbitrary signs, such as those of language (the
word dog has no causal link to the animal thus named, nor does it resemble
a dog). It is essential to note that it is the code, the arbitrary system of Law,
10. See Douglas A. Vakoch, The Conventionality of Pictorial Representation in Interstellar
Messages, Acta Astronautica 46, nos. 1012 (2000): 733736.
85
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
that gives symbols their status and signifcance. Let us return for a moment
to the two Is of the Turkish alphabet. On encountering his or her frst dotless
I, a tourist in Turkey might mistake it for a printing error or, in handwritten
cases, attribute it to haste on the writers part. Te tourists ignorance of this
feature of the writing system would make the absence of the dot seem to be
an accident, not an integral part of a writing system. But if the same tourist
stumbles again and again on occurrences of this curious letter, he will eventu-
ally cease to regard it as a mistake; the very regularity of this form would then
mark it not only as intentional but as a likely element of a writing system.
While only sentient beings can create symbols, they do not express them-
selves exclusively through them (blushing, for instance, is an index). Besides,
a sign acting as a symbol can simultaneously function as another type of sign.
We have just seen that pictorial representation is in part contingent on con-
ventions, so images that human beings draw, paint, etc., are both icons and
symbols. Here is another example. If I write Je serai l 5 heures on a piece of
paper and leave the paper on a table, it means, even for someone who does
not understand French, that a human being has been in that room. Te piece
of paper and its written marks thus act also as an index. Another example
would be hieroglyphs: the sign for to cut resembles a blade, so it is an icon;
but the link between this image of an object and the action of cutting involves
a convention, so it is also a symbol.
Now, only icons and symbols seem to be of real importance to us here,
for the meanings we would like to communicate (such things as the position
of Earth in the galaxy or mathematical formulae) would require either icons
or symbols or, more likely, both. We should not count out indices too soon,
however, since the frst task is to devise signals that will stand an optimal
chance of being perceived as intentional messages. So the aim is to ensure
that our signals are taken as indices not of a natural phenomenon but rather
of a will to communicate. An artifact such as the Voyager spacecraft cannot
be mistaken for a natural phenomenon, but in the case of electromagnetic
radiation such a mistake cannot be ruled out; so the sender of the latter must
ensure that the confguration of the message reduces the risk of such a basic
misunderstanding. I do not think a purely negative approach could work
here: we may avoid any confguration that could be confused with interstel-
lar noise, but doing so cannot guarantee that the remaining confgurations
would not resemble electromagnetic phenomena unknown to us. Tere must
therefore be some kind of metasemiotic cue, some mark that clearly says
Tis is a message. Te difculty lies in encoding this metasemiotic marker in
a way that ensures its recognition and correct decoding. It is clear that this
metasemiotic cue cannot consist of symbols (in the Peircean sense of the
word): being conventional and thus interpretable only by those familiar with
86
Beyond Linear B
the adequate set of rules, symbols would require on the part of the recipients
a knowledge that we cannot presuppose.
Showing and Telling
At this point, a comparison with cryptology may yet become useful. At frst
glance this situation looks quite diferent since the sendera spy, saymust
send a message that his intended recipient will be able to decipher but which,
to other recipients, will remain unintelligible (e.g., a text made of a jumble of
letters) or will seem to convey an innocuous meaning or will not even look
like a message.
11
But this obvious diference covers a less obvious similarity.
Of course, our spy cannot mask the semiotic status of his message by simply
adding a header that says, Tis is not a message or Tis is just an ordinary letter
that I am writing to a friend of mine, just as the sender of an interstellar mes-
sage, conversely, cannot simply declare that what follows is a meaningful
message. Both kinds of messages must convey these metasemiotic assertions
but cannot in any way state them. Tis requirement may be linked to an old
distinction in literary studies, that between showing and telling: a good
writer devises ways to show things, for instance the feelings of his characters,
whereas the debutant or clumsy writer will plainly tell them.
12
To give a simple
example: the blunt novelist will afrm that a character lacks empathy, instead
of putting him, as a more skillful writer would likely do, in fctional situa-
tions where the character might show empathy but does not do so. We can
see the link between Percy Lubbocks showing and Peirces notion of index:
the showing mode of narration consists in giving indices, instead of direct
statements, about what the writer wants to convey.
11. I think with special pleasure of his [Arthur Conan Doyles] sending one of his books to prison-
ers of war in Germany with an accompanying letter explaining that the rst couple of chapters
might be slow but the story would improve about Chapter 3. The intelligent prisoners were
shrewd enough to divine that this meant something. Beginning with Chapter 3 they held the
pages to the light and saw that Doyle had laboriously pricked out certain letters with a needle.
Reading these in succession they spelled out messages of what was happening at home
(Christopher Morley, The Standard Doyle Company [New York: Fordham University Press,
1990], p. 112).
12. The art of ction does not begin until the novelist thinks of the story as a matter to be shown,
to be so exhibited that it tells itself (Percy Lubbock, The Craft of Fiction [1921; New York:
Viking, 1957], p. 62).
87
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
What in literature is only a matter of taste (and literary reputation)
becomes, in the world of spies and that of interstellar communication, quite
crucial. We cannot say to extraterrestrials that our signals are not interstellar
noise; we must fnd ways to show it. In other words, the confguration of the
message needs to lead its recipients to the conclusion that the message was
sent deliberately. We cannot tell them how to interpret the signals correctly
but must show them how, in some way or another. Tis cannot be done by
an external meta-message, a how-to framing device, but must be done by
the primary message itself. In other words, the message needs to embody its
metasemiotic frame.
Lets turn again to the spys problem. His secret messages, to be efcient,
must be difcult to decipher; this could be ensured by the use of an alphabetic
substitution and/or permutation system resulting in a meaningless sequence
of letters. In some situations, as we have seen, they must even dissimulate
the fact that they are dissimulating something. A string of letters, PSTVO
CABDF, say, could achieve the frst goal but not the second. It is interesting
here to note that, when the Second World War broke out, the United States
put a ban on all postal chess games and crossword puzzles for the obvious
reason that ciphered messages could easily have appeared to be innocent
exchanges in such a context.
13
But it should be stressed that, had the censor-
ship bureaus employees been familiar with the rules of chess, they would
immediately have spotted the bogus sequence of movements that a coded
message would inevitably have entailed. (I remember a spy novel from my
teenage years, Langelot et lavion dtourn, that relied on this discrepancy.)
Interpretants and Meaning
All this goes to show that the conspicuousness of a sign is largely contextual,
which is bad news for the interstellar communication challenge because the
reception context is a parameter the sender cannot control and about which
he has virtually no clue. From there, two courses of action present themselves:
devise a context-free sign, or devise signs that compensate for the ignorance
of context. Te frst path points toward the search for universals, that is,
signs that do not depend on a specifc contextor at least not too specifc a
contextin order to be recognized as signs and to stand a chance of being
correctly interpreted; hence the preference expressed by many experts for
mathematics as a basis for communication. Whether they are right is an
13. See Frank Higenbottam, Codes and Ciphers (London: English Universities Press, 1973), p. 17.
88
Beyond Linear B
anthropological question rather than a semiotic one, so I will leave it out of
this discussion.
Te second way is to think up self-contextualizing messagesor, in other
words, self-interpreting signs. A self-interpreting sign is easier conceptualized
than created. Lets consider, for instance, the pictograms imagined by H. W.
Nieman and C. Wells Nieman, which would be sent as sequences of pulses
that correspond to the dots into which an image has been decomposed.
14

In order to reconstruct the correct image, the recipients would need frst to
convert the linear signal into a bi-dimensional structure and then to interpret
that structure to determine what it might signify or represent. I will not dwell
here on the much-discussed problems pertaining to the recognition of visual
signs. I would just like to address the prior (and allegedly simpler) problem of
recognizing a two-dimensional structure embedded within a one-dimensional
signal. Frank Drake imagined an easy and ingenious way to point to this, by
making the total number of dots equal the product of two prime numbers,
say 17 and 23, so that the transmitted message can be construed only as a
17-by-23-cell grid. Such a signal is as close as we may come to a message
embodying an interpretive instruction. It assumes only a basic knowledge of
prime numbers, which is not asking too much.
So this instruction looks promising, but only insofar as the recipient
deduces that the signal corresponds to a rectangular grid. Why not a triangu-
lar or hexagonal grid? Our convention of drawing and painting on rectangles
may not be as universal as we think.
15
Whatever the probability of extrater-
restrial artists using three- or six-sided frames, this analysis shows that any
confguration (here, the product of prime numbers) acts as a sign only by
virtue of some assumption; we may invent astute ways to reduce the number
of assumptions, but we must give up the idea of devising an assumption-
free message. A perfectly self-interpreting sign is an impossibility: whatever
help a signal may ofer on its correct handling and interpretation, there will
always have to be, on the part of the recipient, an interpretive jumpone
that we can hope for but cannot count on unless we devise signs that do the
(metasemiotic) job; but these in turn would have to be themselves correctly
interpreted, and so on. Te recursive dimension of communication cannot
be bypassed, except precisely by the kind of interpretive bets that Peirce calls
abductions and that are the work of the interpreter, not of the sign alone.
14. For a presentation and discussion of this scheme, see Douglas A. Vakoch, The View from a
Distant Star: Challenges of Interstellar Message-Making, Mercury 28, no. 2 (1999): 2632.
15. This reection has been suggested to me by Ren Audet.
89
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Tis conclusion should come as no surprise to a Peircean semiotician,
because for Peirce a sign does have a reference (and a meaning) only by virtue
of its being interpreted. I recall his oft-quoted defnition:
A sign, or representamen, is something that stands to somebody
for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses some-
body, that is, it creates in the mind of that person an equivalent
sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. Tat sign which it cre-
ates I call the interpretant of the frst sign. Te sign stands for
something, its object.
16
A sign refers to its object through the interpretant. Te interpretant is not
the person interpreting the sign, but rather the new sign through which
the interpreter makes sense of the sign. Let me illustrate this with a simple
example, that of smoke and fre. Smoke is obviously a sign (an index, more
precisely), and fre the object to which it refers. It would seem that smoke
refers by itself to the fre. But smoke only results, by a physical relation, from
fre. In order for smoke to have a semiotic relation to fre, it is necessary for an
interpreter to produce an interpretant linking both, for example, the phrase:
Oh, there is fre here! From our perspective, Peirces theory has the sobering
implication that a sign does not include its meaning: it has one only insofar
as it is attributed a meaning through the elaboration of an (appropriate)
interpretant by its recipient. Providing such an interpretant to our interstellar
message would not sufce for this further signand its status as the messages
interpretantwould require its own interpretant, and so on.
Here the distinctions between symbols, icons, and indices again become
useful. In the case of symbols, the gap from sign to meaning is maximal
since nothing in the signs appearance or physical nature gives any clue as to
its object, which is linked to the sign by virtue of an arbitrary correlation.
Without knowledge of the adequate code, a symbol (for instance, the word
Himmelblau for someone who does not know German) remains opaque.
Te recipient of such a sign cannot arrive at its correct interpretant unless
he or she is provided one, by, for instance, consulting a dictionary. Te
interpretation of indices requires a grasp not of a culturally determined
code but of an empirical knowledge that may be shared across cultures and
even, in certain cases, across species: the animals that fee when they smell
smoke clearly understand the signifcance of this index as we do. Te leap
from icons to their interpretations is probably somewhere in between, not
16. Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 2, p. 135.
90
Beyond Linear B
as important as in the case of symbols but less automatically performed
than in the case of indices.
Icons stand relatively close to their objects, for some of their observable
characteristics correspond to features of what they depict. For instance, the
images of the human body proposed by Douglas Vakoch resemble a human
fgure in that they show a head (represented by two superposed squares at
the top), two arms (each represented by three diagonally disposed squares),
and so on.
17
Still, we can expect no direct reconstitution of the object by an
extraterrestrial recipient but at best a series of correct conjectures: that this is
an image; that what it depicts is one fgure (the one that appears in black in
Vakochs illustrations) and not the fve shapes left in white (which, to us, are
an indiferent background of the intended image); that this is a schematic
image of the body of the sender of the message; that the two sets of diagonally
disposed squares are part of this body (and not, say, objects or other beings
clinging to the central fgure); and so on. But the recipient, however intelli-
gent and cooperative, may fail to make what we consider the correct assump-
tionsthus arriving at what to us would seem wrong interpretantsor,
in the worst case scenario, may fail to make any assumption at allin which
case the sign would not even be recognized as such.
Tis discussion about symbols, icons, and indices does not inevitably
lead to the conclusion that interstellar messages should include only the
easier-to-interpret kinds of signs. We must remember that a message is
composed not of one isolated sign but of (sometimes complex) combina-
tions of signs, which may contribute to their mutual elucidation. Tis is
precisely the idea behind Vakochs proposal of a sequence of frames, each
of which would contain six distinct areas: one for the picture; four for dif-
ferent parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs); and one for
the interrelationship between two successive frames (a meta-sign, then).
Here we have a combination of icons (the shape of a human body, or of
parts of it) and symbols: nouns for what is shown in the picture, adjec-
tives for properties of that object (e.g., high, low, etc.), verbs for actions
performed by the character between two successive frames, and adverbs
for characteristics of that action (fast, slow). At frst it may seem dubious
that a recipient could establish a correlation between a given symbol and
17. See Douglas A. Vakoch, Possible Pictorial Messages for Communication with Extraterrestrial
Intelligences, Journal of the Minnesota Academy of Science 44 (1978): 2325. More recently,
Vakoch has commented on the narrative dimension of his proposal in A Narratological
Approach to Interpreting and Designing Interstellar Messages, Acta Astronautica 68, nos. 34
(2011): 520534.
91
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
what it is intended to designate, or even that this recipient could identify
it as a symbol and not as part of the picture. What may decisively help this
eventual recipient is the mutual interpretation that parts of the message
provide for one another (but an interpretation that must still be under-
stood, i.e., interpreted, as such) and the systematic interplay of repetition
and variation between frames, which will give recipients the opportunity
to make conjecturesabductionsthat the subsequent frames may either
confrm or inform, in the latter case pressing the recipients to revise their
previous hypotheses. Whereas Vakoch stresses the narratological structure
of the sequence (the very simple story of an anthropomorphic character
raising and lowering an arm, closing and opening an eye), I would stress its
interactive aspectthe fact that it not only solicits (as any message does)
interpretations but also ofers a trial-and-error game in which conjectures,
perplexities, and even mistakes may contribute to a gradual and tentative
understanding.
Once a message like Vakochs is devised, it should be submitted to several
human interpreters who are unaware of its meaning. Tis test would give
the designers an idea, however approximate, of the decipherability of their
message, but it would also (and more crucially, I think) give them an inkling
of the various and unexpected paths interpreters may explore when trying
to make sense of it.
Unintended Clues
Te admission that part of the process has to be entrusted to the recipient and
the devising of messages that take the interactive nature of interpretation into
account are, in my view, the keys to solving the difculties outlined in this
article. We cannot dictate, control, or even imagine the conditions, presup-
positions, and results of the interpretation of our messages to extraterrestrials.
But we can ofer recipients the opportunity to try various strategies, even if
this implies a risk that the paths they will follow are not the ones we would
have expected or chosen for them. What we know of interpretation shows
that this inability to control reception is always the case anyway, and that it is
not necessarily a bad thing. A widespread conception of communication rests
on the premise that successful reception of a message is one that recovers the
meaning its sender meant to convey through it. But the history of the deci-
pherment of unknown languages shows that things are never so simple, and
that oblique ways of reading sometimes lead to unexpected breakthroughs. In
his book on extinct languages, Johannes Friedrich points out that the direc-
tion in which a script should be read can sometimes be deduced from the
92
Beyond Linear B
empty space at the end of an inscriptions last line.
18
Here we have an index,
a sign caused by its object: the direction of writing is concretely responsible
for which side of the last line is left blank. But this is not so conspicuous a
sign that it does not require a piece of abductive reasoning.
Strange as it may seem, I see in this small example some grounds for hope
regarding interstellar communication. We tend to conceptualize communica-
tion with extraterrestrial intelligences in terms of the successful transmission
of intended meanings. But the production and reception of signs cannot be
restricted to an intentional plane. An important feature of most indices is their
unintentional nature. Tis applies not only to natural signs, such as smoke,
but also to consciously produced signs, which always include an indexical
aspect besides what the sender meant to say. Te tourist confronted with a
dotless I may, as we have seen, conclude erroneously that it is a mistake; but
this hypothesis becomes less and less plausible as he or she encounters more
dotless Is, repetition of which becomes an index of the regular nature of this
sign, even if this indication never crossed the mind of the texts authors.
Tis example shows once again the centrality of interpretation. Peirces
insistence on the role of the interpretant implies that a sign, as soon as it
is recognized as such (which is already the result of an interpretation), is
subject to an endless and often unexpected interpretive process. Tis will
certainly be so if, by chance, our signals are received by intelligent beings,
whatever their physiology or culture. We can rely, up to a certain point, on
the ingenuity of recipients. While they may not understand particular things
we want to communicate, they may instead recognize and interpret, maybe
even fruitfully, some clues we have left quite unintentionally. Te Sumerian
scribe who left a portion of the line empty could not possibly imagine that
he was leaving a sign that would be read and utilized many centuries later
by an archaeologist. SETIs situation is not really much diferent. From the
experience of decipherers of extinct languages, it seems that sending as many
and as various messages as possible is the best strategy, the one that ofers
the greatest chance at the recipients end. Te content of our messages may
be far less important than the number and the variety of messages we send,
if only because they will give the recipients more opportunities to compare
and test their abductions about past messages against new examples. In the
absence of feedback, this may be the best course of action when devising our
interstellar messages in a bottle.
18. Johannes Friedrich, Extinct Languages (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), p. 91.
93
CHAPTER SIX
Learning To Read
Interstellar Message Decipherment from
Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives
Kathryn E. Denning
Introduction
Human musings about Others in faraway lands, from distant times, and on
other worlds predate academic disciplines by thousands of years. Te loca-
tions may be diferent, but the questions at the heart of the matterWhat
do Others know of their worlds? What do Tey do there? How can We learn
about Tem?are the same. It is not surprising, therefore, that anthropology,
archaeology, and SETI share certain core issues. It is also not surprising that
anthropologists/archaeologists and SETI scientists understand and address
these core issues diferently, given their divergent disciplinary orientations.
Tese convergences and divergences provide a space for some very interest-
ing interdisciplinary discussions.
1
My primary focus in this paper is on just
one of many intersections of anthropology, archaeology, and SETI: interstel-
lar messages.
2
I aim to highlight some assumptions about message decipher-
ability and decipherment that appear in the SETI literature and that tend
1. I discuss some of these intersections at length in Kathryn Denning, Social Evolution: State
of the Field, in Cosmos and Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context, ed. Steven J.
Dick and Mark Lupisella (Washington, DC: NASA, 2010), pp. 63124; Kathryn Denning,
Unpacking the Great Transmission Debate, in Communication with Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, ed. Douglas A. Vakoch (New York: SUNY Press, 2011); Kathryn Denning,
Being Technological, Acta Astronautica 68, nos. 34 (2010): 372380; Kathryn Denning,
Ten Thousand Revolutions: Conjectures about Civilizations, Acta Astronautica 68, nos.
34 (2011): 381388; and Kathryn Denning, L on Earth in Civilizations Beyond Earth:
Extraterrestrial Life and Society, ed. Douglas A. Vakoch and Albert A. Harrison (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2011), pp. 7483.
2. Although I have elsewhere discussed in detail some of the other intersections among these three elds
of research, the present chapter was written in 20042006 and has been only minimally updated.
Learning To Read
to be contradicted by anthropology and archaeology. Tese contradictions
stem from diferences in the use of Earth analogues, in frameworks regarding
linguistic meaning, and in epistemological orientations. I argue that by draw-
ing from diferent disciplinary traditions, we can strengthen the conceptual
groundwork for interstellar message decipherment.
Anthropology, Archaeology, and SETI
At the time of writing, there have been no confrmed signals of intelligent
extraterrestrial origin, but then again, scientifc SETI is a recent endeavor.
3

Over the past several decades, an impressive body of scientifc work on astro-
biology and on SETI has emerged; a growing community of scientists has
been rationally and meticulously working through the possibilities, creating
and testing hypotheses.
4
Many scientists are actively engaged in searches, and
powerful new equipment is being developed. And as one SETI researcher
has put it, as the power of [SETI] searches continues to increase, so does
3. Two events marked the start of modern SETI: rst the publication of Giuseppe Cocconi and
Philip Morrisons article Searching for Interstellar Communications, Nature 184, no. 4690
(1959): 844846; and, second, Frank Drakes Project Ozma, a radio telescope search begun
in 1960 at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. But, as
Peter Chapman-Rietschi notes, there were earlier suggestions in the scientic searches made
by Ernest W. Barnes in 1931 and by Fred Hoyle in 1950, and in another 1959 article by S. S.
Huang published in American Scientist; see P. Chapman-Rietschi, The Beginnings of SETI,
Astronomy & Geophysics 44, no. 1 (2003): 17. For a description of the prescient deliberations
of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1933, which were apparently suppressed by the Soviet regime, see
B. Finney, V. Lytkin, and L. Finney, Tsiolkovsky and Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Acta Astronautica
46, nos. 1012 (2000): 745749. For concise descriptions of the earlier history of SETI ideas,
see Steven J. Dick, Extraterrestrial Life and our World View at the Turn of the Millennium,
Dibner Library Lecture, Smithsonian Institution Libraries (2000), available at http://www.sil.
si.edu/silpublications/dibner-library-lectures/extraterrestrial-life/etcopy-kr.htm. See also
David Grinspoon, Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life (New York: HarperCollins,
2004). For more details, see Steven J. Dick, The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-Century
Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press,1996).
4. In 2004, the NASA Astrophysics Data System listed more than 600 SETI-related articles in
refereed journals (Mark Moldwin, Why SETI Is Science and UFOlogy Is Not: A Space Science
Perspective on Boundaries, Skeptical Inquirer 28, no. 6 [2004]: 4042). In summer 2011,
that total exceeded 1,000; see http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html.
95
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
the probability of discovering an extraterrestrial civilization.
5
Another SETI
scientist has recently reckoned that, because of very rapidly improving search
technology, astronomers will detect signals within a single generation, if ever.
Tat is to say, if theres anyone out there for us to fnd, we will likely know
before 2030.
6
And whether we fnd neighbors or not, either way, the result
will be signifcant.
Tose directly involved in the search are busy developing and implement-
ing new technologies for scanning the skies and analyzing data. Teir overall
task seems clear: search as much territory as thoroughly and efciently as
possible. But is there anything that other researchers can usefully do while
Earth waits for a signal that may or may not come? In particular, what might
anthropologists and archaeologists contribute?
While scarce in comparison with those from the physical and biological
sciences,
7
contributions to SETI from the social sciences have been steady.
Social scientists and SETI scientists have addressed a multitude of SETI-
related social topics, including the social efects of the search, psychological
correlates to beliefs about ETI, the social impact of a detection event, the uses
of SETI in education, characterization of long-lived societies, what people
would want to learn from ETI, global political decisions about whether to
reply to a message, and the formulation of post-detection protocols.
8

5. J. Billingham, Cultural Aspects of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Acta
Astronautica 42, nos. 1012) (1998): 711719, esp. p. 711.
6. Seth Shostak, When Will We Detect the Extraterrestrials?, Acta Astronautica 55, nos. 39
(2004): 753758.
7. Billingham, Cultural Aspects of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, 711.
8. For a particularly wide-ranging review, see Albert Harrison, After Contact: The Human Response
to Extraterrestrial Life (New York: Plenum, 1997). An excellent overview of cultural aspects of SETI
is provided by a SETI scientist in Billingham, Cultural Aspects of the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, pp. 711719. Of particular note here is Billinghams comment that the time is ripe to
begin a thorough examination of SETI and Society[since] the number of authors who have pub-
lished on these issues can be counted on the ngers of a few terrestrial hands (p. 713). For the
social effects of the search, see A. Tough, Positive Consequences of SETI Before Detection, Acta
Astronautica 42, nos. 1012 (1998): 745748. For the psychological correlates to beliefs about
ETI, see Douglas A. Vakoch and Y.-S. Lee, Reactions to Receipt of a Message from Extraterrestrial
Intelligence: A Cross-Cultural Empirical Study, Acta Astronautica 46, nos. 1012 (2000): 737
744. For the social impact of a detection event, see John Billingham et al., eds., Social Implications
of the Detection of Extraterrestrial Civilization: A Report of the Workshops on the Cultural Aspects of
SETI (Mountain View, CA: SETI Press, 1999); G. Seth Shostak, Media Reaction to a SETI Success,
Acta Astronautica 41, nos. 410 (1997): 623627. On the uses of SETI in education, see Edna
96
Learning To Read
Similarly, anthropologists and archaeologists have also been involved in
the discussion ever since the emergence of modern scientifc SETI eforts.
Te Drake Equation, often referred to as the cornerstone of modern SETI,
is formulated in such a way that the estimated average lifespan of advanced
civilizations strongly afects the estimated number of civilizations that might
be sending interstellar communications. And indeed, it was on the issue of
civilizations life-spans that anthropologists and archaeologists contributed
to formal SETI debates as early as 1971.
9
Recently, anthropologists and
archaeologists have worked on SETI-related topics through assessment of
the possible evolutionary paths to intelligence; review of historical prec-
edents for contact between civilizations; simulations of contact; and, in this
volume, consideration of the challenges of interstellar message decipher-
ment and composition.
10
DeVore et al., Educating the Next Generation of SETI Scientists: Voyages through Time, Acta
Astronautica 53, nos. 410 (2003): 841846. On characterizing long-lived societies, see Albert
Harrison, The Relative Stability of Belligerent and Peaceful Societies: Implications for SETI, Acta
Astronautica 46, nos. 1012 (2000): 707712. See also A. Tough, What People Hope to Learn
from Other Civilizations, Acta Astronautica 46, nos. 1012 (2000): 729731.
9. Kent Flannery and Richard Lee participated in an early CETI symposium: see Carl Sagan, ed.,
Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI) (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1973).
Other anthropological contributions to the discussion from the 1970s are outlined in Charles
F. Urbanowicz, Evolution of Technological Civilizations: What is Evolution, Technology, and
Civilization?, paper presented at a 1977 symposium titled The Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence (SETI), held at Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California; the full text of
this paper is available at http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Unpub_Papers/1977SETIPaper.
html. Discussions of human evolution that derive from work in physical anthropology appear
frequently in SETI literature.
10. On evolutionary paths to intelligence, see, for example, Garry Chick, Biocultural Prerequisites
for the Development of Interstellar Communication, chapter 13 in this volume; Lori Marino et
al., Intelligence in Astrobiology, http://intelligence.seti.org; Kathryn Denning and Lori Marino,
Getting Smarter about Intelligence, Astrobiology 8, no. 2 (2008): 389391; and Douglas
Raybeck, Predator-Prey Models and the Development of Intelligence, paper presented at the
SETI Institute, Mountain View, California, on 20 November 2004.
For three recent studies of historical precedents for cross-cultural contact, see Douglas
Raybeck, Contact Considerations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, chapter 9 in this volume;
Kathryn Denning, The History of Contact on Earth: Analogies, Myths, Misconceptions, paper
presented at the 61st International Astronautical Congress of the International Astronautical
Federation 2010 (paper no. IAC-10-A4.2.2); and Kathryn Denning, Is Life What We Make of
It? in The Detection of Extra-terrestrial Life and the Consequences for Science and Society,
97
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
But there is more to be done, as Ben Finney contends in his argument for
further consilience between SETI scientists and social scientists.
11
All of the
work done thus far in social scientifc areas will prove to be crucial preparation
if a detection event ever does occur, when a cascade of challenges would rapidly
follow and multidisciplinary expertise would be needed. But even if a SETI
detection event never occurs, this research still benefts us by enhancing our
understanding of how we represent ourselves and how we measure the limits
of our self-knowledge. Tis is, arguably, the ultimate project in abstracting
principles about language, symbolization, cognition, and interpretability;
about civilizations and what makes them develop the way they do; and about
the evolution of technology.
Tere is another reason for anthropologists and archaeologists to add
their voices to SETI discussions, and that is simply that their subjects are
often invoked as examples of potential SETI outcomes. SETI discussions
rely heavily on Earth analogues for predictions of the efects of contact and
the challenges of understanding radically diferent kinds of communication.
Specialists in Earth cultures, past and present, can contribute meaningfully
to these discussions by unpacking those analogies and considering how best
to use them.
12
Using Earth Analogues Effectively
SETI researchers must speculate extensively. After all, there is as yet no
accepted evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Terefore, it is not surprising
thatas with many fascinating topics for which data are presently insufcient
and implications are far-reachingthere is diverse and sometimes vehe-
mently polarized thinking among scientists on many SETI issues, including
ed. Martin Dominik and John C. Zarnecki, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A
369, no. 1936 (2011): 669678, available at http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/
content/369/1936/669.full.
On simulations of contact, see, for example, the long-running annual conference
described at http://www.contact-conference.com.
11. Ben Finney, SETI, Consilience and the Unity of Knowledge, in Bioastronomy 99: A New Era
in the Search for Life, ASP Conference Series, vol. 213, ed. G. Lemarchand and K. Meech (San
Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacic, 2000).
12. For one example of such an analysis, see John W. Traphagan, Anthropology at a Distance:
SETI and the Production of Knowledge in the Encounter with an Extraterrestrial Other, chapter
8 in this volume.
98
Learning To Read
the probability of being contacted by other intelligences, what extraterrestrials
could be like, and the wisdom of sending interstellar messages.
13
Tis range of arguments and assertions is of considerable interest because
it is not a consequence of data or their interpretation. Rather, much of the
diversity in scientifc SETI discourse stems, I believe, from alternative forms
of reasoning, and also from the diferent Earth-based analogues (human and
otherwise) that SETI researchers use in building their conceptual models of
ETI. Tese infuential analogues and varied reasoning processes comprise a
fascinating and important substrate to SETI.
14
Te problem with analogies is that they are highly persuasive, inherently
limited, and easily overextended. Tey therefore constitute a signifcant source
of error in cultural understanding. For example, people often assume that
Others are very much like themselves. Tis attitude can be called ethno-
centrism, or it can be construed as an analogyto oneself and ones own
culturewhich has been taken too far. A related problem is the single exotic
example, generalized so that all Others are understood to be essentially the
same. Anthropology ofers theory, methods, and a wealth of cross-cultural
data that can help us to avoid these errors. It emphasizes the diversity of
human culture and experience while also seeking to make it comprehensible.
Accordingly, in relation to SETI, Earth analogues are best used in sets, as illus-
trations of the diversity of behavior among intelligent beings. Single analogies
are rhetorically useful in illustrating a point, for example, that contact could
have unintended and potentially disastrous consequences, as it did when
Columbus arrived in the Americasbut sets of analogies have the power
to tell us something that we dont already know or suspectfor example,
patterns distilled from the full range of contact phenomena that have been
observed in human history. Using sets gives us the option of fnding common
13. Some background on SETI scientists may be found in David Swift, SETI Pioneers: Scientists
Talk About Their Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Tucson: University of Arizona Press,
1990). For an interesting assessment of the reasoning involved in SETI, see Andr Kukla,
SETI: On the Prospects and Pursuitworthiness of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part A 32, no. 1 (2001): 3167. David Koerner
and Simon LeVay also vividly describe some differences of opinion in Here Be Dragons: The
Scientic Quest for Extraterrestrial Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
14. This subject is covered at length in Denning, Social Evolution: State of the Field, in Dick and
Lupisella, eds., Cosmos and Culture (see n. 1 above for full citation).
99
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
principles in cross-cultural comparisons, via deduction, rather than assuming
all cultures to be essentially similar, based on induction from single cases.
15
My comments below are generated partly by this distinction between
induction up from single cases and deduction down from multiple cases,
and partly by the anthropological principle that culture is endlessly variable
and that we make assumptions about the cognitive worlds of others at our
own risk.
The Decipherability of Interstellar Messages
What if SETI telescopes actually pick up a signal from a distant star system?
Could we understand it? Should we respond to it? If so, what should we say,
and how? Should we just go ahead and call them without waiting for them
to call frst?
For many years, SETIs emphasis has been on listening, known as Passive
SETI, rather than on transmitting, known as Active SETI, although some
messages have already been sent into space. Te subject of whether further
communications should be sent at all has been much discussed in recent years
within the SETI community, but broadcasting has continued, and approaches
to the problem of message content and encodingthat is, what to say and
how to say ithave evolved considerably. Discussions about the form and
content of interstellar messages, both outgoing and incoming, have a long
history, dating back to at least the early 1800s.
16
Tese dialogues are ongoing,
with some very interesting interdisciplinary work on the challenges of creating
messages that ETI might fnd intelligible.
17
Many have argued that we need not worry too much about optimally
encoding our messages to ETI or about decoding their hypothetical messages
15. For one such exploration, see Raybeck, Contact Considerations: A Cross-Cultural
Perspective, chapter 9 in this volume.
16. For a concise review of ideas about message construction from 1826 onward, see Douglas
A. Vakoch, Constructing Messages to Extraterrestrials: An Exosemiotic Perspective, Acta
Astronautica 42, nos. 1012 (1998): 697704. Another overview can be found in Brian
McConnell, Beyond Contact: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations
(Cambridge: OReilly UK, 2001).
17. See, for example, Douglas A. Vakoch, The Art and Science of Interstellar Message
Composition, Leonardo 37, no. 1 (2004): 3334; and other papers in the same issue.
See also abstracts here: Encoding Altruism: The Art and Science of Interstellar Message
Composition, http://publish.seti.org/art_science/2003/.
100
Learning To Read
to us. If, as is commonly assumed in SETI circles, extraterrestrial civilizations
turn out to be vastly older and more advanced than we are, then perhaps they
will be kind enough to construct their messages in such a way that we can
comprehend them (as in Carl Sagans book Contact), and perhaps they will
have no difculty comprehending whatever we say, however we say it. For
example, Brian McConnell surmises: Since its a reasonable assumption that
a civilization capable of receiving an interstellar message is probably pretty
smart, its also reasonable to assume that, given enough time to understand the
[alphanumeric] documents, they will be able to learn the meaning of many
of the words in our vocabulary.
18
Seth Shostak has similarly argued that we
neednt focus on short, simple messages, as any decent extraterrestrial engi-
neer would be able to decode our television signals, and would probably fnd
them more informative than simple pictograms.
19
Certainly these assertions
could be true, but the anthropological perspective suggests that they are not
necessarily true, or even likely to be true, given the cultural embeddedness of
language and images. For example, the word dog has no necessary connection
to a dog, and not everyone interprets a picture in the same way.
Tus, it is also possible that outgoing and incoming signals could be
utterly incomprehensible to their respective recipients. But it seems illogical
to concede this without making an efort; that would be equivalent to shrug-
ging and not answering the cosmic telephone, saying that it is enough to have
simply heard it ring. Unquestionably, in the context of SETI, there would be
value in recognizing an artifcial signal and seeing patterns in it even without
understanding the content.
20
Tere is a similar truth in archaeology, as Paul
Wason has pointed out, for there is much that we can learn from symbolic
behavior without necessarily being able to decipher its specifc meaning.
21

However, that is something of a consolation prize.
I therefore take the position that the intertwined tasks of composing
intelligible interstellar messages and deciphering such messages are neither
18. McConnell, Beyond Contact, p. 369.
19. G. Seth Shostak, SETI at Wider Bandwidths? in Progress in the Search for Extraterrestrial
Life, ed. G. Seth Shostak, ASP Conference Series, vol. 74 (San Francisco: Astronomical Society
of the Pacic, 1995), pp. 447454.
20. Cipher A. Deavours, Extraterrestrial Communication, in Extraterrestrials: Science and Alien
Intelligence, ed. E. Regis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 201214. See
also John Elliott, Detecting the Signature of Intelligent Life, Acta Astronautica 67, nos. 1112
(2010): 14191426.
21. See Paul K. Wason, Inferring Intelligence: Prehistoric and Extraterrestrial, chapter 7 in this
volume.
101
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
trivial nor impossiblein other words, I consider these challenges worthy
of attention. I regard the challenge of decipherment as primary, for if we can
efectively isolate what makes a message decipherable, then we can compose
messages with those anticryptographic properties in mind. In defning what
makes a message decipherable, we have recourse to multiple felds of study,
including cryptology and archaeology.
In cryptology, generally speaking, original text is called plaintext, which
is then encrypted via a keytext to create a cryptotext. Any two out of these
three will reveal the third.
22
Given a cryptotext, one would then proceed
with standard cryptanalytic methods, which have their roots in the inher-
ent properties of language. Te usual sequence of attack with cryptotexts
is determination of the language employed, the general crypto system, the
specifc key, and the plaintext.
23
Cryptanalysis is essentially a distillation of
classic scientifc method,
24
but, like any method, it has limitations. Tus, there
are cryptosystems that are perfectly secure, i.e., that result in indecipherable
messages. In the realm of cryptanalysis, decipherability requires that the cryp-
totext provide some information about the plaintexteven just fragments of
indirect informationwithout the keytext.
In archaeology we have a wider range of scenarios, with a tremendous vari-
ety of writing systems, languages, symbols, and communication purposes, and
so the methodological repertoire is correspondingly wide. Archaeologists do,
however, generally agree that to be decipherable, an inscription must include
at least one known language or the names of historical fgures.
25

While cryptological and archaeological methodologies would undoubt-
edly be useful in deciphering an interstellar message, we cannot assume that
these tools alone would be sufcient to accomplish the task. Powerful com-
puters would help, but even the artifcial intelligence of the future could be
challenged by completely unknown languages and symbolic systems, which
might not succumb to brute computational and methodological force.
A more comprehensive strategy for deciphering interstellar messages could
begin with a compilation of the problem-solving strategies and scenarios we
have already encountered on Earth along with a careful consideration of the
disciplinary frameworks within which these are situated.
22. F. L. Bauer, Decrypted Secrets: Methods and Maxims of Cryptology, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Springer, 2002).
23. Bauer, Decrypted Secrets, p. 218.
24. As Bauer observes, cryptanalysis is a prototype for the methods in science (Decrypted
Secrets, p. 438).
25. P. T. Daniels and W. Bright, eds., The Worlds Writing Systems (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996), pp. 142143.
102
Learning To Read
Different Disciplinary Perspectives on
Redundancy and Revealing Knowledge
Douglas Vakoch has noted a predictable yet fascinating polarization on the
subject of interstellar messages: mathematicians and physical scientists are
often confdent that the problems of decoding and optimal encoding can
be solved and propose new ways of doing so, whereas social scientists and
humanities scholars tend to critique those approaches and state that the prob-
lems are fundamentally insoluble.
26
Philosophically speaking, this is a sure
indication of something intriguing and worth exploration. Why such difer-
ent opinions? An example may help to locate the origins of these divergences
and suggest some interesting areas for further exploration.
Jean Heidmann, a prominent SETI thinker and a highly accomplished
astronomer at the Paris Observatory until his death in 2000, suggested trans-
mitting the Encyclopedia Britannica into space, displaying little concern for
decipherability. Te Encyclopedia pages, Heidmann said, are:
essentially a linear string of typographic signs (the text) and a
set of bidimensional arrays of pixels (the illustrations) whose
coding is elementary. Te alphabetical coding can be deciphered
using just a few pages, as well as the grammatical structures.
Te illustrations are also obviously decidable by any ETs using
bidimensional information from their own environment. Te
coupling between text and illustrations will easily provide infor-
mation nearly ad infnitum.
27
Heidmanns optimism is enviable. But his statement is fascinating to me
because it seems so clearly and defnitely wrong from an anthropological
perspective, given that reading texts and interpreting images are not even
human universals.
28
Yet Heidmann was obviously a very sophisticated thinker
in his feld, and many shared his opinions. His argument has recently been
extended by Shostak, who advocates sending the contents of the Google
26. Vakoch, Constructing Messages to Extraterrestrials, pp. 697704.
27. Jean Heidmann, Extraterrestrial Intelligence, ed. Storm Dunlop, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 202203.
28. For constructive skepticism about Heidmanns argument, see Douglas A. Vakoch, The Dialogic
Model: Representing Human Diversity in Messages to Extraterrestrials, Acta Astronautica 42,
nos. 1012 (1998): 705710.
103
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
servers into space, since they include enough redundant information to ensure
their decipherability.
29
Vakoch suggests that the optimism of scientists on this matter of decipher-
ability refects well the continued accomplishments of science and technology
in the contemporary world, although this confdence could do with tempering,
since fundamental assumptions do need periodic re-evaluation.
30
But is this
view of decipherability simply a result of the optimism of scientists in our era
of incredibly rapid scientifc progress? Or is it rather a refection of the tendency
among SETI scientists, noted above, to believe that any ETI with whom we
exchange signals will be much more technologically advanced than we are?
Conversely, does the skepticism of scholars in the humanities and social sciences
result from a lack of appreciation for mathematical arguments regarding the
likely age of ETI or from an underestimation of recent advances in computing,
techniques in cryptography and signal processing, and the might of deductive
logic? Perhaps. But I suspect there are additional factors at work here.
Te diference of opinion also refects epistemological diversitydiferences
in how we believe we can know the world. Where does knowledge lie? How is
it obtained? Is it merely uncovered in the world, or is it created in the mind? A
reprise of the Science Wars and a great deal of Western philosophy might be
of use here in outlining disparate views on these questions, but in the interest
of brevity, I will simply assert my own view that not all knowledge is the same.
Some knowledge is discovered more than it is made; some is made more than
it is discovered. We are not dealing with the same kind of knowledge all the
time. Not all knowledge can be deduced through sheer logic and computational
might. Some knowledge, like the meaning of a picture or the relationship of a
word to a thing, is cultural and arbitrary. Tis variable is crucial when consider-
ing what sorts of methods are appropriate to a given situation.
Heidmanns viewand perhaps some others like itseems at least partly
born of confdence that the redundancy inherent in written language and
the redundancy of coupling text with images are enough to ensure decipher-
ability. Tis idea may originate with Claude Shannons work in information
theory, as his research has infuenced not only SETI researchers but cryptolo-
gists as well.
31
29. G. Seth Shostak, What Do You Say to An Extraterrestrial?, Space.com/SETI Institute (2
December 2004), http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_whattosay_041202.html.
30. Vakoch, Constructing Messages to Extraterrestrials, pp. 697704.
31. C. E. Shannons 1948 classic, A Mathematical Theory of Communication (Bell System
Technical Journal 27, nos. 34 [1948]: 379423 and 623656) is frequently cited in scientic
SETI documents.
104
Learning To Read
But a theory can easily break down when applied in new contexts, and
there is indeed a shift in context here. To what, exactly, is this theory about
redundancy in language being applied in Heidmanns example above? Not
to the discovery of a pattern in an interstellar signal nor to the identifca-
tion of a pattern as the work of an intelligenceeither of which would be
an appropriate use of the theorybut to the recovery of specifc information
from an interstellar message. Tis begs further attention.
It is perfectly true that redundancy aids recognition of a signal as a lan-
guage or a code, and this recognition is crucial to SETI. However, Shannons
method provides only a quantitative measure of the complexity of a language
or signaling systemnot a translation.
32
And while it is axiomatic in cryptol-
ogy that redundancy helps in deciphering a text, the task of decipherment/
cryptanalysis is to move from an encoded text to the original textnot from
text to meaning. To get from text to meaning, we need to understand the
language. Put another way, redundancys primary function is to reduce noise
or permit correction in the case of imperfect transmission; it improves the
signal-to-noise ratio but does not provide for the conversion of signal to
information.
33
And, as Richard Saint-Gelais notes, the conversion of signal
to information involves semiotic issues that cannot be bypassed via method.
34
Broadly speaking, this observation suggests that the matter of SETI and sig-
nalseither outgoing or incomingoccupies a tricky intersection, where para-
digms, methods, and disciplines meet. It may be that concrete examples from
Earth can help us to puzzle through the theoretical problems of decipherment.
Analogues from Anthropology and Archaeology:
The Rosetta Stone and Mathematics
Te archaeological process is itself a useful illustration of the matter of inter-
pretation. In contrast to the classic model of scientifc discoveryi.e., read-
ing the book of Nature, uncovering information that exists independent
of the observerarchaeology is now held by many to exemplify a diferent
32. Brenda McCowan, Laurance Doyle, and Sean F. Hanser, Using Information Theory to Assess
the Diversity, Complexity, and Development of Communicative Repertoires, Journal of
Comparative Psychology 116, no. 2 (2002): 166172.
33. Thomas Sebeok, I Think I Am a Verb: More Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs (New York:
Plenum, 1986), p. 170.
34. Richard Saint-Gelais, Beyond Linear B: The Metasemiotic Challenge of Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, chapter 5 in this volume.
105
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
kind of reasoning process. Interpretation begins at the trowels edge; the
archaeologist is an integral part of the discovery.
35
Te material remnants, the
signs, of past lives have no inherent meaning without a living mind acting
upon them. Te encyclopedia of the ancient world cannot simply be read or
translated. It needs modern coauthors.
In a more concrete sense, the archaeological record is useful as a collec-
tion of poorly understood signals, where the problem lies in bridging the gap
between symbol and meaning. Many have made this connection, noting that
archaeology as well as cryptology could provide useful information about
how to decipher an incoming message from ETI and how best to encode
an outgoing message to ETI. Te case of the Rosetta Stone, for example, is
frequently invoked in the SETI literature.
Carl Sagan argued that mathematics, physics, and chemistry could con-
stitute a cosmic Rosetta Stone: We believe there is a common language
that all technical civilizations, no matter how diferent, must have. Tat
common language is science and mathematics. Te laws of Nature are the
same everywhere.
36
Following Sagan, many SETI researchers have proposed
that we should use mathematics or physical constants as a basis for communi-
cation with ETI: since we wont have names or historical events in common,
a universal principle or property would have to serve as a virtual bilingual
or a crib. Discussion of this subject has been lively. As Vakoch observes:
Te dominant position among astronomers and physicists is
that conveying information between two civilizations will be
relatively straightforward because both species will share basic
conceptions of mathematics and science. Scholars in the human-
ities and social sciences typically contend the opposite: that even
mathematics and science as we know them may be specifc to
humans, and that it may be impossible to develop systems of
communication across species.
37
35. Ian Hodder, The Archaeological Process: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999).
36. Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), p. 296.
37. Vakoch, Constructing Messages to Extraterrestrials, p. 697. Early explorations of mathemat-
ics as the lingua franca were carried out by Drake, Oliver, and Morrison in the early 1960s.
Among the rst to discuss the idea were Iosif Shklovskii and Carl Sagan in Intelligent Life in
the Universe (London: Holden-Day, 1966). A particularly useful hierarchy of coding levels,
beginning with astrophysical coding and only gradually working up to alphabets, mathemat-
ics, and images, can be found in James M. Cordes and Woodruff T. Sullivan, III, Astrophysical
Coding: A New Approach to SETI Signals. I. Signal Design and Wave Propagation, in Shostak,
106
Learning To Read
True to form as a social scientist, albeit a hopeful one, I must note that
even if the laws of nature are the same everywhere, as Sagan believes, and even
if all technical civilizations understand some of them, these circumstances
cannot ensure all the secondary conditions that would be necessary for suc-
cessful communication. Even if two diferent intelligences were expressing
the same single scientifc principle, understood by each of them in exactly the
same waywhich seems scarcely imaginablethere would be a good deal
of luck and inference involved in establishing this beginning point. And, of
course, just as language has a cultural context, so does math.
38
Tus, there is
a potential incommensurability problemperhaps the notion of a universal
math is, in the words of historian W. H. McNeill, rather chauvinistic.
39
I do not think, however, that an anthropological perspective requires
us to abandon the matter there. On the contrary, anthropology can ofer
useful Earth analogues, specifcally, those of ethnomathematics.
40
Modern
astronomy and physics use Western mathematics, but other mathematical
systems have existed on Earth, with very diferent ways of understanding and
expressing the world. Te fact that none of these systems did produce modern
technology, such as radio telescopes, does not necessarily mean that they could
not have done so; that failure could be as easily due to historical contingencies
and interruptions to their development as to anything inherent in the systems
themselves. Until a qualifed scholar undertakes the project of considering
whether or not, for example, ancient Mayan mathematics might eventually
have produced an understanding of electromagnetic radiation or advanced
geometry, this point is moot. In the meantime, simply learning about radi-
cally diferent forms of mathematics here on Earth would extend the range
of analogies SETI researchers can draw upon, and thus could be of use. It
would demonstrate the diverse possibilities for mathematical representation.
But if human math and science do not look like extraterrestrial math
and science, then the Rosetta Stone analogy will not hold up. We must
ed., Progressin the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, pp. 325342. McConnell also supposes
that idiot-proong messages would involve a multistage process beginning with math and
Boolean logic (Beyond Contact, pp. 357358).
38. B. Martin, Mathematics and Social Interests, in Ethnomathematics: Challenging Eurocentrism
in Mathematics Education, ed. A. Powell and M. Frankenstein (1988; rpt. Albany: SUNY Press,
1997), pp. 155172.
39. Vakoch, Constructing Messages to Extraterrestrials, pp. 697704.
40. See, for example, M. Ascher, Mathematics Elsewhere (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2002); and M. Ascher, Ethnomathematics: A Multicultural View of Mathematical Ideas
(Pacic Grove: Brooks/Cole, 1991).
107
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
also remember that the Rosetta Stone was but one of several pieces in the
hieroglyphs puzzle, the others being inscriptions from other artifacts, such
as the Philae Obelisk, and Champollions knowledge of ancient Greek and
Coptic Egyptian.
41
Archaeological Decipherments
To observe that the Rosetta Stone is not a straightforward analogy is not to say
that we cannot learn anything of use from archaeological decipherments. It is
to say, rather, that the general analogy between archaeological decipherments
and potential interstellar messages should be explored more fully.
For example, we know that successful decipherment in archaeology has
required accurate copies of scripts, a familiar language, proper names of
historical fgures known from neighboring cultures that left interpretable
records, and bilingual or multilingual inscriptions.
42
Tese features parallel
the standard needs of decryptionclean signals without noise, plus keys
and cribsand are thus to be expected. But just as signifcantly, successful
decipherment has also required the shedding of assumptions about how a
symbol connects to a language. Any connection between a sign and what it
signifes is a matter of convention. Does a sign represent a spoken sound?
Does it represent a physical thing that it resembles? Does it represent an idea?
Does it sometimes represent one of these and sometimes another? Puzzling
through these problems has required scholars to abandon fundamental con-
cepts about alphabets and images.
43
Several ancient scripts have yet to be deciphered, such as the Indus script,
the Rongorongo script, Linear A, Linear Elamite, Jurchen, Khitan, and some
Mesoamerican scripts. Sometimes a key piece of information is missing, such
as the language being represented. Sometimes there just isnt enough of a
41. Richard B. Parkinson, Cracking Codes: The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment (London: British
Museum Press, 1999).
42. Daniels and Bright, eds., The Worlds Writing Systems, pp. 142143. For comments on the
slightly different Linear B scenario, see also Saint-Gelais, Beyond Linear B, passim.
43. See, for example, Cyrus H. Gordon, Forgotten Scripts: How They Were Deciphered and Their
Impact on Contemporary Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1968); Roy Harris, The Origin
of Writing (London: Duckworth, 1986); Joyce Marcus, Mesoamerican Writing Systems:
Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1992); Parkinson, Cracking Codes; and Kurt Ross, Codex Mendoza: Aztec Manuscript,
with commentary (Barcelona: Miller Graphics, 1978).
108
Learning To Read
script to do much with it. Te best methods in the world cannot bridge cer-
tain gaps. Tis situation is humbling but no cause for despair. It simply means
that we have more work to do to fnd information that can bridge those gaps.
But sometimes our approach itself may be inadequate; the problem may be
an unidentifed supposition we have not yet examined. For example, in the
case of the Indus script, we have 4,000 texts with plenty of redundancy, but
the sheer quantity of information has not enabled linguists or cryptologists to
decipher it. Recent analyses suggest that the entire framing of the Indus script
has been incorrect, which might explain why none of the many attempts at
decipherment (more than 100 published since the 1800s) has met with much
acceptance.
44
Te problem, as suggested by Steve Farmer and others, could be
that the Indus symbols are not a script at all; that is, perhaps there is no direct
correlation between the Indus symbols and a language.
45
Te symbols were
clearly meaningful but not necessarily in the same way as, for example, the
hieroglyphic or cuneiform inscriptions that have been deciphered. It could be
a case of discordance between the signs, their modern-day viewers assump-
tions about types of meaning, and modern methods of accessing meaning.
Cases such as the frustrating Indus script are just as instructive as the clas-
sic, successful decipherments of hieroglyphs, Linear B, or cuneiform. If we
choose only one of these analogies to inform our projections of an interstellar
decipherment project, we limit ourselves unduly. In a related discussion, Ben
Finney and Jerry Bentley elegantly argue that when considering the potential
impact of ET radio transmissions upon human society, we should explore
the wide range of human experience around the globe and not focus solely
on familiar cases that appear to reinforce our most earnest hopes.
46
More
specifcally, they make the case that the modern Wests learning from classical
44. Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel, The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis:
The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization, Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 11, no. 2
(2004): 1957.
45. Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel, The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis, passim. Then again, a
brute-force computing approach may be yielding results: see also a contrary view in Rajesh
P. N. Rao et al., Entropic Evidence for Linguistic Structure in the Indus Script, Science 324,
no. 5931 (2009): 1165, available at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5931/1165.full;
and Rajesh P. N. Rao, Probabilistic Analysis of an Ancient Undeciphered Script, Computer 43,
no. 4 (2010): 7680, available at http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~rao/ieeeIndus.pdf. The
debate continues.
46. Ben Finney and Jerry Bentley, A Tale of Two Analogues: Learning at a Distance from
the Ancient Greeks and Maya and the Problem of Deciphering Extraterrestrial Radio
Transmissions, chapter 4 in this volume.
109
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Greek sources is probably not a good analogue for ET decipherment and its
consequences, and that the case of Mayan hieroglyphs is a better example,
given that the decipherment was tremendously difcult and is still underway.
I agree with their intention, which is not to declare interstellar message
decipherment impossible but to insist that it may not be simple. And I sup-
port their suggestion to look at difcult decipherments. But further, I would
suggest that we should focus not just on decipherment successes but also on
failures. Successes confrm that, given adequate data, established methods
work much of the time. Failures indicate a space in which we can learn,
information we must acquire, theory we must build, and assumptions we
must identify and discard.
SETI Begins at Home
It has been said that SETI begins at home, and I concur.
47
In considering
interstellar message composition and decipherment, why not make the best
possible use of all the Earthly data and methods we have? Tere are many
areas in which anthropology and archaeology can contribute to SETI think-
ing; we share the fundamental tasks of learning what not to take for granted
and developing methods through which we can comprehend very difer-
ent minds. Earths cultures, used appropriately, can provide useful analogies
for expanding our thinking about ETI. And perhaps considering our local
unsolved puzzles will help us to build the strongest possible strategies for
reading interstellar mail.
47. Lori Marino, SETI Begins at Home: Searching for Terrestrial Intelligence, in Shostak, ed.,
Progress in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, pp. 7381.
110
CHAPTER SEVEN
Inferring Intelligence
Prehistoric and Extraterrestrial
Paul K. Wason
Introduction
Diferent as they may be in other respectssources of data, research tools,
academic trainingwhat the felds of archaeology and the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) do have in common is at the core of
their respective enterprises: the study of intelligent beings without beneft of
frsthand observation. Archaeological analysis is conducted without direct
contact with living beings, with few if any written communications to aid
the study; and it is accomplished by constructing bridging arguments that
span great distances of time, space, culture, and, in the case of our hominid
ancestors, biology. While we can imagine other kinds of contact with extrater-
restrial intelligence, these basic but important features of archaeology likely
apply to SETI, tooat least for the time being.
I cannot guess whether any of the insights earned through the develop-
ment and practice of archaeology may prove useful to scholars seeking evi-
dence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Te diferences between the two ventures
may simply overwhelm what they have in common. But I believe there are at
least analogical connections. In particular, to the extent that approaches in
archaeology uncover evidence of intelligence as a phenomenon per se, and
not of humanness specifcally, some insights from this discipline could be
transferable to SETI.
Uncovering evidence of human activity in the past is of course the pri-
mary goal of archaeology, but doing so often means inferring intelligence or
some aspect of it, such as agency, purpose, design, choice, the expression of
meaning, or the ability to communicate. Archaeological work can help to
reveal one or another of these aspects of intelligence and, perhaps, not just
human agency but agency itself. Tere may thus be some hope of generalizing,
and these approaches may provide a basis for the development of analogous
approaches in SETI.
In the following sections I ofer a series of archaeological vignettes that
illustrate some of the more promising avenues to explore and a few of the
Inferring Intelligence
issues that may be faced. One might think it more helpful if I were to ofer
instead some kind of identifcation key to intelligence, perhaps a set of 10
infallible signs of human activity. Whether or not this is even possible, the
creation of such a key or set would certainly be more difcult than it seems
at frst. Archaeologists in fact do not often identify the criteria they use for
demonstrating intelligence or for drawing any other conclusion about human
activity except in very specifc discussions about the materials at hand. When
surveying large areas for archaeological sites, our eyes are naturally drawn to
circles and straight lines, to regularly shaped formations (or at least those
shaped diferently from the background terrain). In looking at rocks, bones,
or other materials that are potentially artifacts, we seek symmetries, regular-
ity, evidence of the use of tools rather than teeth, and so on. But we cannot
use the presence of these features as a generalized key for inferring human
activity. One cannot, for example, say something as straightforward as that
circular structures must be human-made (or made by an intelligent agent).
And even if generalizations of this kind were possible, it is not clear they could
be transferred for use in the world of astronomy, where circles, symmetries,
and regularities abound.
For this chapter, my examples are at a broader level and more in the
manner of lessons learned than prescriptive advice. First, I consider briefy
an instance in which archaeology may seem to have failed on its own terms.
Tis is not very comforting for those of us who want to use archaeology
in the service of SETI. But I also suggest a way out. My second vignette
considers the equally troubling issue of ethnographic analogy. Protests to
the contrary notwithstanding, I believe archaeology cannot be done at all
without drawing analogies to known living human groups. Tis notion, too,
would seem to make the relevance of archaeological approaches to SETI a
very great stretch indeedbut, again, I dont think this makes it impossible.
Te next vignettes, which explore the importance of intellectual and physical
contexts, expectations for a solid scientifc argument, and the implications
of symbolism for understanding communications, will perhaps help to close
on a more optimistic note.
When Archaeological Methods Dont Seem to
WorkEven When Studying Humans
Archaeology begins with certain advantages over the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence. Its practitioners now have a century and a half of experience
inferring the past activity, thoughts, and intentions of intelligent agents.
Although archaeologists cant observe these intelligent beings in action, they
113
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
do have an abundance of material remains and the contexts of their former
use. And most obviously, they already know a great deal about these beings
quite independently of the archaeological work itself.
Yet even so, archaeology has not always succeeded in its eforts. Worse, it
is not always possible to tell whether researchers are even on the right track.
Consider the Paleolithic cave art of southern Europe that scholars have been
studying for more than a century. Many theories have been ofered concerning
what these paintings are all about (what they mean, why they were painted,
and so on), but there is no agreement at this pointwhich raises the following
question: What hope do we have of communicating with extraterrestrials if we
have such a hard time understanding symbolic imagery produced in Europe
as recently as 12,000 years ago by members of our own species?
Tis is a valid question, certainly. But for several reasons the situation is
not nearly as bleak as all that. First, though we may not have solved all the
riddles, we have made some progress; it has hardly been a century of efort
without insight. Admittedly, there are some things we may never learn about
Paleolithic cave art. I fully agree with Cliford Geertz, who characterizes art
as a local matter.
1
One need only think of Leonardo da Vincis Te Last
Supper. As David Lewis-Williams observes, this painting has rather little to
do with a group of hungry men, but what chance would someone unfamiliar
with Christianity have of knowing what it really is about?
2
While Geertz has
an important point, perhaps it does not apply to everything we may wish to
know. Why stop at local, after all? Why not claim, as is sometimes done,
also with good reason, that art is personal and no one can ever understand
someone elses art or someone elses response to art? Why not admit, for that
matter, that the artist herself does not really understand what she has cre-
ated, art being a somewhat intuitive afair? Surely there is some truth to each
of these perspectives. But while there are some things that I as an individual
will never know about a given work of art, this limitation doesnt mean that I
cannot know anything about it, or that what I do know about it is somehow
less true for being incomplete.
Te same can be said for insider cultural knowledge at the local level: there
are some things outsiders will never know, but this fact does not mean one can
never learn anything about another culture. Admittedly, the all-or-nothing
1. Clifford Geertz, Art as a Cultural System, Modern Language Notes 91, no. 6 (1976): 1473
1499, esp. p. 1475; Paul K. Wason, Art, Origins of, in Encyclopedia of Science and Religion,
vol. 1, ed. J. Wentzel Vrede van Huyssteen (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003), p. 31.
2. David Lewis-Williams, Discovering South African Rock Art (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers,
1990).
114
Inferring Intelligence
way I phrased the Last Supper example is a bit misleading. A viewer will, yes,
miss much if he or she knows nothing about Christian theology, but one
doesnt need that local knowledge to realize there is a lot more going on in
this painted scene than the satisfaction of hunger.
So my second and perhaps more important reason for optimism about
humans ability to understand cosmic cross-cultural communications is that
our frustrations with Paleolithic art have mostly had to do with the difculty
of understanding the messages content, what is being communicated. No
one denies that these paintings are the work of human agents, produced
through purposeful activity and carrying meaning. We can infer the existence
of intelligences, and we can learn much about them simply from looking at
these works of art, even without knowing what the images mean in the sense
of what their creators were trying to express in them, or understanding the
cosmology behind this sophisticated symbolic activitythe latter perhaps
being truly local knowledge.
Ethnographic Analogy: Knowledge of the
Ways of Intelligent Creatures
Ethnographic analogy is using what we already know about human mate-
rial culture to interpret what we discover in archaeological contexts. Most
valuable for prehistorians have been analogies with the ways of traditional
peoples around the world known to us through the feld of ethnography
(hence the name), but of course archaeologists apply analogies to what they
themselves think and do at least as much, even if they arent always aware
of doing so. Ethnographic analogy was actually a key to the beginnings of
the feld in the frst place, and to the recognition of human antiquity by
Europeans. For hundreds of years Europeans appear to have been oblivious
to the existence of stone tools. Presumably many people saw them. At least
it is hard for me to believe that no stone axes, spear points, or arrowheads
turned up in plowed felds, dried streambeds, or eroded hillsides. But, as
William Stiebing observes, there is no mention of them prior to the 16th
century. People apparently did not notice them. To them such things
were just so many more rocks.
3
Writings from the 16th century indicate
that people were noticing anomalies, for example, that rocks which we
would now recognize as stone tools, difered substantially from others in the
3. William H. Stiebing, Jr., Uncovering the Past: A History of Archaeology (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus
Books, 1993), p. 29.
115
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
landscape. Tese objects were widely referred to as fairy arrows or elf-shot or,
by those less given to specifying a cause in terms of personal agency, thunder-
bolts. In his classic book Te Idea of Prehistory, Glyn Daniel quotes an expla-
nation ofered by Ulisse Aldrovandi in the mid-16th century. Aldrovandi
described objects we would now label stone tools as due to an admixture of
a certain exhalation of thunder and lightning with metallic matter, chiefy
in dark clouds, which is coagulated by the circumfused moisture and con-
glutinated into a mass (like four with water) and subsequently indurated
by heat, like a brick.
4
And these rather surprising words, as Daniel puts
it, were written by a man who has been described as the greatest zoologist
of the Renaissance period.
5
I cannot resist quoting one more example in
which the use of jargon also seems inversely proportioned to useful infor-
mation conveyed; a man named Tollius from about the same time period
claimed chopped fints to be generated in the sky by a fulgurous exhalation
conglobed in a cloud by the circumposed humour.
6
Even while such things were being pondered, other scholars were propos-
ing that these objects were ancient tools. Te reasoning these proto-archae-
ologists ofered in support of such a view turns out to be very importantan
analogy with similar tools used by the Native Americans. Once the connec-
tion was made, it is no surprise that this view rapidly became the standard
one. Ethnographic analogy saved the day in this case, as it often does, and in
the process represented a major step toward what would become the academic
feld of prehistory.
In one sense this is not good news for SETIthat it could require analo-
gies with known activities of specifc cultures to correctly interpret these rocks
as products of intelligent human activity. But I suggest this is only half the
story. If we dig a little deeper, we see that even those who did not recognize
them as tools did understand that something about the rocks needed to
be explained. In retrospect, the superstitious common people who dubbed
them elf-shot or fairy arrows were, in an odd sort of way, more perceptive and
closer to the core truth than those who concocted naturalistic or mechanistic
explanations. For they recognized the most important point, namely, that
these items are indeed the products of intentional beings, purposeful agents.
How do people recognize intentionality and purposeful agency? As
noted earlier, the archaeological literature seems to have largely neglected
4. Ulisse Aldrovandi, quoted here from Glyn Daniel, The Idea of Prehistory (Cleveland, OH: The
World Publishing Company, 1962), p. 47
5. Aldrovandi, The Idea of Prehistory, p. 47.
6. Aldrovandi, The Idea of Prehistory, p. 47.
116
Inferring Intelligence
this question. In part this neglect may be due to the fact that archaeology has
often tried to follow the social science model of research, which seeks over-
arching trends and external causation. Until recent years archaeology seriously
undervalued agency, giving more attention to broad cultural and ecological
forces than to individual initiative. Another reason archaeologists can work
so hard, often successfully, to recognize intelligent agency and purposive
behavior yet give so little attention to how we actually make inferences
concerning intelligent agents, may be that it is actually quite difcult. At
heart, it is not really an archaeological problem but an issue of cognition. In
the fnal section, I ofer a few thoughts in this direction as well as suggestions
for future research, based on recent cognitive science. But it seems clear, both
from those who spoke of elf-shot and from contemporary archaeology, that
we are often quite capable of recognizing the products of intelligence even
when we cannot clearly articulate what we are using as evidence.
As for the skeptics, they were on the wrong track altogether, though their
motivation was reasonable enough, in that it was the fairies of which they
were skeptical. Even so, their response is useful. Tose who tried to explain
stone tools as things formed in clouds by various processes with intimidating
names clearly understood there was something special about them in need
of explanation. Tey simply did not allow themselves to attribute it to intel-
ligence. Had I lived at that time, I may well have been in this groupbut
only because the problem was framed in such a way as to limit the options
to lifeless mechanical action or fairies.
It is not easy to see what you are not looking for, or to know what it is
you do not know, and both the strengths and weaknesses of ethnographic
analogy grow from this conundrum. Ethnography expands our vision of what
is humanly possibleor at least what has been tried by other humansbut
cannot expand our vision much further than that. It is likely enough that even
in the Paleolithic there were social forms not represented among ethnographi-
cally known peoples, so what of a distant planet? As has often been said, if
we depend too heavily on ethnographic analogy, we lessen our chances of
discovering the true range of forms human society has taken.
Intellectual Context
Like most aspects of culture, our intellectual culturethe intellectual context
in which our view of the world is formedfrees us to explore new ideas in
disciplined and creative ways. At the same time, it constrains our search by
restricting what we are predisposed to believe is possible. One example of how
intellectual context can afect our approach to and success with archaeological
117
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
interpretation is found in the next episode of this brief history of the under-
standing of stone tools. While the idea that they were toolsby analogy
with those of Native Americansbecame accepted, scholars at frst did not
appreciate their great age. Teir true nature, so to speak, could not be rec-
ognized, as the existence of a Paleolithic origin simply did not ft with what
everyone knew to be true.
How might this point be relevant for SETI? First, and rather generically,
intellectual context has the same relevance for SETI as for any other science:
it can be liberating or limiting, but major breakthroughs in difcult problems
often come about when that context is transcended, when someone thinks the
previously unthinkable. Tis link recognizes Tomas Kuhns much-repeated
principle that the data supporting scientifc theories are theory-laden,
described and interpreted in the light of theoretical expectations.
7
Even our
choice of what counts as dataindeed, even what we are able to see out
of the myriad bits of information that come our way in any experimentis
interpreted according to our assumptions about what we expect to see. But
this inescapable bias does not warrant the discouraging view that even scien-
tifc fndings are just relative, as Imre Lakatos asserted.
8
We are not trapped
hopelessly in our web of assumptions, and the way out is to be pushed by
unexplainable data to rethink the theoretical assumptions. Such thinking
the unthinkable is undoubtedly difcult, but it is possible.
Second, and rather more specifcally, the importance of intellectual con-
text to our ability to see what we are not looking for does suggest a possible
solution to the Fermi Paradox. Perhaps like those fne scholars of the 18th
century who had myriad evidence for prehistoric human activity but could
not imagine it, we, too, have evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence but some-
how cannot recognize it. Now, I realize these are dangerous words. Doesnt
this guy know that Men in Black is fction? you may ask, or Does he want
us to take stories of abductions and ancient astronauts seriously? All claims I
am aware of concerning evidence for aliens including the kinds of things
people like to talk about once they learn I am an archaeologistmake the
rather diferent assertion that the aliens are among us, or have been in the
past. Tey are not proposing untapped sources of information. And they
seem to me to be perfect examples of being caught in a current intellectual
7. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientic Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1970).
8. See Nancey Murphy, Theology in an Age of Scientic Reasoning (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1990); Nancey Murphy and George F. R. Ellis, On the Moral Nature of the Universe:
Theology, Cosmology and Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), pp. 1013.
118
Inferring Intelligence
context, a current context of some kind anyway. Attributing the Nazca Lines
in Peru to aliens has as much to do with cultural prejudice as attributing
ancient artifacts to elves or fairies because doing so was somehow easier than
imagining prehistoric humans living here before us.
But what might we discover if we could break out of our intellectual con-
text? Tis is a question that SETI researchers must ask constantlywonder-
ing, for example, whether even something as simple as tuning to a diferent
radio frequency could be the key to discovering data about ETIs that have
surrounded us all along. Perhaps it is not technology that sets all our limits.
Physical Context
What turned the tide in European scholarly appreciation of prehistoric
humanity was the physical context: specifcally, tools found in undisturbed
sediments and in clear association with the remains of extinct mammals. Tis
discovery, along with a growing appreciation for Earths age, yielded a broad-
ening and shifting of the intellectual contextperhaps even something of a
revolution in the intellectual context of Europe. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
one of the excavators of Peking Man, expressed beautifully the ability to
conceive of the antiquity of humanity as a surprisingly recent conquest of
the modern mind:
Today we smile as we think of the thrills and triumphs experi-
enced by our great predecessors when in 1864 they frst observed,
on a fragment of mammoth tusk, the carved outline of the mam-
moth itselfdefnite testimony, over mans own signature, that
man...had known and hunted the fabulous and (to the scientist
of the period) fabulously ancient animal.
9
Physical context remains central in all archaeological research at sev-
eral levels. Any day-to-day work also depends on the context created by
existing knowledge. Contexts in this sense food our meager data with all
manner of associations and additional conclusions that fesh them out into
a picture of human activity. Archaeologists do not read raw dataalmost
anything we might wish to say about a fnd is an interpretive conclusion.
When I come across another broken stone in my garden in Pennsylvania
9. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Idea of Fossil Man in Anthropology Today: An Encyclopedic
Inventory, ed. A. L. Kroeber (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 93.
119
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
and determine it to be a projectile point, I receive a message from the past
that is rich and deep and easy to read. My mind is flled with images of
woodland longhouses, villages with smoke curling lazily into the blue sky
as small clusters of people work on various tasks, a group of men returning
with two deer from a hunt, children and dogs playing all around. Te tool
does not tell me all this by itself but because it is in a context. Had I found
a tool, perhaps vaguely similar in appearance, in a garden in India, the
context of associations would be rather diferent. Similarly, in the study of
human evolution, a great deal can be said about a primate and its lifestyle
from something as small as a tooth, for the parts of an organism are even
more tightly knit than the parts of a culture.
To take just one more example, what we accept as conclusions can depend
on the broader context of what is already known. Debates continue about the
anthropogenic nature of fnds. For example, the Calico Hills site in California
is said by Ruth Simpson to be some 250,000 or more years old. Tis estimate
is way out of line with anything else we know about the peopling of North
or South America. No frm dating to earlier than 12,000 years ago had been
accepted until 2000, when Tomas Dillehay conclusively demonstrated that
the Monte Verde site in southern Chile is at least 15,000 years old (and
possibly a good deal older).
10
Tis date, too, may well changeafter all, an
archaeologist can almost never say, Tis is the oldest, but only Tis is the
oldest evidence yet discovered. It is, however, very unlikely (for a host of
reasons unrelated to the Calico Hills site in itself ) that humans lived in the
New World a quarter of a million years ago.
A similar line of reasoning holds for the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in
southwestern Pennsylvania. Some of the radiocarbon dates came back at
about 19,000 years. Tis dating is also out of line with previous estimates
but not as dramatically so, especially now that the long-standing 12,000-year
barrier has fallen. In the case of Calico Hills, Simpsons dating is solid, but it
may not be a site at all, for only stone tools have been found there, and it is
not entirely clear that they are tools. More likely they are geofacts, naturally
broken rocks that mimic the appearance of artifacts. As for Meadowcroft,
this is a complex Paleoindian archaeological site, but it is still hard to accept
a date of 18,000 years ago. At the moment, the most likely explanation is
that the carbon sample was contaminated natural coal, giving the materials
an appearance of much greater age. Because stratigraphically the layer with
10. For an excellent presentation by the excavator of the Monte Verde site, with references to the
strangely difcult-to-nd technical literature, see Thomas D. Dillehay, The Settlement of the
Americas: A New Prehistory (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
120
Inferring Intelligence
the older date does not otherwise seem to be so much older than the other
layers, this theory is quite plausible. On the other hand, the excavation was
done with exceptional care by an archaeologist (James Adovasio) who well
understood what was at stake. To put it another way, this site may be every bit
as old as it seems, and the problem lies instead with our intellectual context.
11
SETI is also conducted within a web of interrelated empirical knowledge and
under a set of intellectual expectations, a context that renders some ideas more or
less plausible. Obvious as this circumstance may seem when stated in this way, it
has a signifcant efect on research. We have seen this phenomenon in exobiology,
a line of study that has been rendered more interesting by the recent discoveries
of extremophiles on Earth. I would suggest then that, contrary to the view held
by many who regard SETI with interest from the outside, the success of the
SETI enterprise is not really an all-or-nothing matter. Firm evidence of even
simple life beyond Earth will render the existence of intelligent life somewhat
more plausible, in much the way existing knowledge of the peopling of the New
World renders certain proposed site dates more or less plausible.
Acceptable Approaches to Scientic Argument
Alison Wylie, perhaps the foremost philosopher of archaeology, has analyzed
archaeologists reasoning process.
12
Some arguments are like chainsthey
follow link by link by logical link. But if one link fails, whether through faulty
logic or lack of evidence, the whole argument falls apart. Science is portrayed in
this metaphor as a formal, sequential testing of hypotheses. Such a process does
not work well in the practice of archaeology, which, as Lewis-Williams notes,
is, almost by defnition, the quintessential science of exiguous evidence.
13
In practice, Wylie points out, archaeologists use an approach to reason-
ing that more closely resembles the weaving of strands to form a cable. No
individual strand does stretch, and no individual strand of reasoning needs
to stretch, from raw data to frm conclusion. Rather, the whole cable, if well
11. J. M. Adovasio and Jake Page, The First Americans: In Pursuit of Archaeologys Greatest
Mystery, (New York: Random House, 2002). For an excellent overview of issues concerning the
rst human colonization of North and South America, see David J. Melzer, First Peoples in a
New World: Colonizing Ice Age America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
12. Alison Wylie, Archaeological Cables and Tacking: The Implications of Practice for Bernsteins
Options Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, Philosophy of Science 19, no. 1 (1989): 118.
13. David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and The Origins of Art (London:
Thames and Hudson, 2002), p. 102.
121
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
constructed, bridges larger gaps than the individual strands ever could. Te
separate arguments also help to confrm or challenge one another. As well as
enabling or sustaining, this method is also constraining (in a useful way) in
that the pieces really do have to ft together. Some speculation that may seem
plausible given one type of evidence just will not work as the whole package
fts together. To take one telling example, archaeologists often rely very heavily
on studies of ceramics. Marion H. (Harry) Tschopik traced the continuity of
Andean Aymara ceramics of the Puno region over fve centuries, and what he
discovered was quite surprising:
If the data furnished by the Aymara ceramic tradition taken alone
and by itself were our only evidence of change (which of course is
not the case), the Inca era in the Puno region would have passed
virtually unrecorded, and Spanish contact would have appeared
to have been slight or feeting. By and large, Aymara ceramics
have been modifed to a far less extent than other, and more basic
aspects of Aymara culture.
14
Tis understanding of the reasoning process is in some respects valuable
for any feld of study with large gaps in its data, and it is thus highly relevant
to any future SETI signal detection. To forestall hopeless confusion should
we receive a message from beyond Earthindeed, even to help us have hope
of recognizing a communication when we see onewe need to consult every
strand of evidence and use every type of reasoning available to understand it.
Tis, I trust, is obvious enough, but I mention it because in some felds the
context in terms of expectations about how good science is done can work
against weaving various clues together from diverse sources, often with the
dismissive claim that since none of the clues really makes the case on its own,
the case has not been made.
The Importance of Symbolism
Although I have, without apparent hesitation, just made page-length forays
into intellectual history and the philosophy of science, two areas outside
my expertise, I must preface this section by saying that the study of sym-
bolic representation, the cognitive skills involved, and the approaches to
14. Marion H. Tschopik, An Andean Ceramic Tradition in Historical Perspective (1950), quoted here from
Paul K. Wason, The Archaeology of Rank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 34.
122
Inferring Intelligence
understanding are areas whose potential contribution to the inference of
intelligence is matched only by the immensity and complexity of the literature
on these subjects. Still, they cannot be avoided when considering this topic.
Te study of symboling is important to the archaeological inference of
intelligenceif only for the obvious reason that producing symbols requires
intelligence. One problemand this is perhaps at the root of worries about
understanding any communicationis that symbols can, and often do, have an
arbitrary (or at least a conventional rather than conceptual) relationship to the
things they symbolize. While this relationship is arbitrary, it is not necessarily
random. Indeed, when it comes in the form of language, symboling is extraordi-
narily systematic. So the arbitrariness or conventional nature of the connection
does not mean we can never fgure out what is being said through symbols. As
suggested concerning the study of cave art, if we can recognize something as
the product of symbolic behavior, we have learned a great deal already without
having the slightest idea what the symbols mean: we know that there is an indi-
vidual capable of high-level intelligent activity, that this individual was trying to
communicate, and that this individual is therefore a social being.
Consider the decipherment of ancient languages written in scripts like
Egyptian (or, more recently, Mayan) hieroglyphics. It might seem that sym-
bolism and communication of ideas routinely expressed in complex symbol-
ism would be the worst possible way to go about constructing messages for
nonEarth-based intelligences. But this pitfall is not easily avoided. We may
send messages expressing pure mathematics, or perhaps scientifc knowledge,
but these concepts must be communicated in a medium that will, of necessity,
be symbolic. (Sending pictures is another way to go, although it does assume
certain sensory commonalities.) But it might make a diference whether or
not the symbols are in systematic form (like a language), for otherwise the
problems resulting from their arbitrary relation to their referents will be
multiplied. While mathematics does not include a grammar as such, surely
the concepts and their symbolic representations are systematically related,
even if not in the same way as natural languages.
On the other hand, it is unlikely to be easy in any case. Writing, for exam-
ple, has the advantage of representing a very systematic set of symbols. Yet, it
is in efect a symbol system representing another symbol system (the language
itself ) representing the ideas. Kathryn Denning points out elsewhere in this
book that no ancient form of writing has ever been deciphered without some
knowledge of the language in which it was written.
15
Tis fact is important,
15. Kathryn E. Denning, Learning to Read: Interstellar Message Decipherment from
Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives, chapter 6 in this volume.
123
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
and somewhat discouraging, in light of the probability that interstellar mes-
sages will also engage at least two layers of symboling.
Again, to recognize something as a symbolic communication, we do
not need to actually understand the content, and thus may not need to get
through these two layers. But from the perspective of those constructing the
messages, this issue may be more important, assuming that we want to be
understood if at all possible and not merely recognized as intelligent. Given
this difculty inherent in messages communicated via writing or other symbol
systems, it may be that messages with only one layer of symbolism could be
easier to understand.
Humans do often use symbols to express ideas that cannot be articu-
lated verbally or mathematically. In archaeology, evidence of symbolic activ-
ityartworks especially, which are usually related to religious or spiritual
issuestypically tells us most about past thought and intelligences. We can
learn a great deal from the fact of the symboling behavior, as noted already,
and also from its nature and characteristics, even without being able to deci-
pher what is being expressed. And while ideas concerning matters aesthetic,
moral, religious, and poetic seem to be the ones in which human cultures
vary most, in fact there is often substantial commonality. I realize this seems
counterintuitive to most of us, especially to people like me, who can never
seem to get the point of poetry, or to people who think of religion in terms
of squabbles over doctrines rather than in terms of its connection to the
human spiritual sense. But the point is easily illustrated: we may not know
what the artists of Lascaux or Altamira were saying specifcally, but when we
see their work, we feel something, often described as the universal human
spirit shared across the millennia. But it is just as conceivable that it is the
spirit of intelligent, purposive beings, a spirit, perhaps, shareable over even
greater spans of time and space.
I hasten to add that I am not confusing feeling with knowing, as is so
common in popular discourse. I am suggesting something more like the
following: creating messages such that ETIs could recognize our use of sym-
bols and thus our intelligence, should be possible. Transmission of speci-
fed, objective knowledge through written language is certainly worth trying,
but if our experience in deciphering ancient scripts is any indication, it will
not be easy for an intelligent being out there to get through the two layers
of symbolism to the content of the message. Communicating as the artists
(symbolists) of Lascaux did, with but one layer of symbols, wont get across
a concrete, specifed body of data either, but it could convey useful insight
about us, perhaps more than a rich, language-based message that cant be
read. Anthropologists and archaeologists are largely agreed that religion is
a human universal. Tus, there is an argument to be made for designating
124
Inferring Intelligence
religion as a topic for interstellar communication. On portions of the planet
where exponents of contemporary academia live, religion is regarded as a rare
aberration, or perhaps as an early evolutionary stage. But on Earth as a whole
this is not true; indeed it would be an error of great proportions to think so.
Religious people are not uncommon even among the sophisticated ranks of
scientists. Like every other aspect of culture, religion comes in many favors;
but this variety does not mean there is no common basis for religion or that
it has no referent outside the human subjective self. Such conclusions follow
no more logically than they do when the same idea is applied to some other
area of human culture, such as food. Te fact that humans often eat radically
diferent things does not contradict the fact that eating is a universal, much
less the existence of nutritional sources outside of our bodies.
In his entertaining introduction to astrobiology, Sharing the Universe:
Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life, Seth Shostak raises the question of ETs
religion.
16
He makes the important point that whether or not ET has religion
depends on what religion is: if it is a useful survival tool, it will likely evolve
on other worlds; but if, like music, it is mainly a contingent by-product of
other evolved capabilities, it may be unique to humans and not a universal
feature of intelligent life. Shostak then adds, Of course, if they do, theres
little chance that the specifcs of ETs faith will mimic our own, any more
than his appearance will resemble ours.
17
I am inclined to think otherwise (including about music). If religion is
essentially a survival mechanism for humans, it would be a highly contingent
feature of human psychology, and thus its evolution elsewhere would seem
implausible. Religion is likely to be widespread throughout the universe only
if it refers to some reality beyond the peculiarities of the Homo sapiens brain.
And if it does, then it may well have features in common wherever found.
If religion and spirituality really refer to something outside of our brains
a creator God, for examplethen it could well be the case that an ETI would
have a sort of spirituality or religion and that it might even be recognizable
as such. I have elsewhere defned religion as the human cultural response to
the real or perceived supernatural.
18
Mine is only one of hundreds of defni-
tions ofered, but it is useful to remember that religion really is a human
phenomenona feature of human culturesand it varies as much as our
16. G. Seth Shostak, Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life (Berkeley: Berkeley
Hills Books, 1998), pp. 99100.
17. Shostak, Sharing the Universe, p. 100.
18. Paul K. Wason, Naturalism vs. Science in the Anthropological Study of Religion, Omega:
Indian Journal of Science and Religion 3, no. 1 (2004): 2758.
125
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
cultures do. But my defnition does not reduce religion to nothing but cul-
ture right from the start; it leaves open the possibility that religion refers to
important facets of reality that are not as easily recognized via other cultural
forms of knowing.
Perhaps what we should be looking for is any place where human nature
intersects with a deeper reality (and so would not represent human nature
alone). If there is a creator God, then this Being might constitute a connection
between us and ETIs, via our respective religions, despite the likelihood of
extensive diferences between us in other respects. Similarly, if there are real
meanings and purposes in the universelove, quest, purpose, or whatever
these, too, are potential connections. As with religion, all the examples I can
think of are disputed. I believe music or mathematics could work if there
is a fundamental reality to, for example, harmony, as could mathematics if,
as George Ellis and some other scholars suggest, math exists objectively, not
just in the human brain, and so is discovered rather than invented.
19
Te
nature of these features of reality is as disputed a point as the existence of
God, it seems; and if it happens that music or mathematics is an arbitrary
invention of the human mind, then neither may serve as a connection with
extraterrestrial beings.
Conclusions and Next Steps
To return to a crucial question, how, specifcally, do we recognize intelli-
gent agency and purpose? Recall that archaeologists regularly fnd items of
unknown function, yet these researchers have no problem agreeing that the
items are the product of human activity. In this instance the inference is clearly
not from known function to demonstration of human agency. Often enough,
we argue endlessly about an objects functions, never questioning its having
been the product of human activity. Tere must be some other feature of these
tools, that tells us this piece of stone is a naturally fractured rock and that one
is a tool. Do we need ethnographic analogy to make this determination? Is
our conclusion based on what we know about humansincluding implicit
insight gained from the researcher actually being one of these creaturesor
is it based on a deeper recognition of intelligence or purpose or agency? As
with the matter of elf-shot, I think it is often the latter.
19. George F. R. Ellis, True Complexity and Its Associated Ontology, in Science and Ultimate
Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology, and Complexity, ed. John D. Barrow, Paul C. W. Davies,
and Charles L. Harper, Jr. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 607636.
126
Inferring Intelligence
In his fascinating book titled Why Would Anyone Believe in God?, Justin
Barrett reviews the literature on what cognitive psychologists like to call
the human agency detection device.
20
Students of cognition give us reason to
believe humans are attuned to things that have a personal source. Being on
the lookout for agency, so to speak, is often a subconscious process, which
may account for our difculty in clarifying exactly why we think something
is an agent. During my archaeological training, I was often told, in efect,
just work with the materials and eventually you will see it. And though I
would have preferred a straightforward identifcation key, this turned out to
be good advice.
It is entirely reasonablefrom the point of view of both natural selec-
tion and common sensethat our minds would work this way. In his book
Faces in the Clouds, Stewart Guthrie asserts that religion is essentially anthro-
pomorphism.
21
I fnd many of his observations concerning our intellectual
predispositions both interesting and helpful. I particularly like an example
which runs something like this: If you see an object ahead on the trail and
think it is a bear but it turns out to be a rock, you have not lost much. But
if you think it is a rock and it is really a bear, that is a diferent matter. In
such a world as ours, where we cannot always identify bears and rocks with
certainty, it is reasonable to assume natural selection will favor the one who
is predisposed to recognize living, purposive agents.
Tere are good selectionist reasons for being able to detect agency and
personality whenever they are seen. But we cannot have perfect knowledge.
Ideally, it would be a rock, and the person walking along would know it is
a rock at frst sight; but ours is an uncertain world, and we inevitably err a
portion of the time. All else being equal (visual acuity, level of intelligence,
reaction time, and running speed, for example), natural selection could well
favor those who err on the side of overestimating agency and purpose in the
world around us.
Following the lead of cognitive scientists, including those associated with
the promising feld of evolutionary psychology and the new cognitive science
of religion (of which Barrett is one of the founders), I suggest that what the
archaeologist is seeing when identifying one lump of rock as a tool and
another as a naturally occurring stone is evidence not just of humanity in the
concrete (and, for our purposes, narrow) sense but of intention, purpose, the
work of an agent with a plan. We see, for example, repeated regular blows
20. Justin L. Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2004).
21. Stewart Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1993).
127
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
and chips, something that would result from an intelligent being trying to
do something, not from a rock tumbling down a hillside due to frost erosion
and the work of gravity.
To the extent that this is true, it is very encouraging, for it suggests that part
of being an intelligent, purposive agent is a deeply evolved ability to recognize
the work of other intelligent, purposive agents, even, perhaps, if they are not
Homo sapiens from planet Earth. It would work equally well the other way
around, for any intelligent being will be a purposive agent and will therefore
have evolved under conditions favoring the ability to recognize other agents
and distinguish their work from other forms of causation.
128
CHAPTER EIGHT
Anthropology at a Distance
SETI and the Production of Knowledge in
the Encounter with an Extraterrestrial Other
John W. Traphagan
Troughout much of its history, anthropology has explicitly focused its intellec-
tual gaze upon the understanding of seemingly alien others whose languages,
beliefs, patterns of living, and social structures have been viewed as remote from
the societies of the industrial WestEngland, France, Germany, and the United
Statesin which the discipline developed. In the formative years of anthropol-
ogy, ethnographers did not normally have the capacity to be in direct contact
with the others who were the object of their studies. Indeed, early armchair
anthropologists of the 19th century, such as James Frazer, E. B. Tylor, and Lewis
Henry Morgan (although Morgan did also conduct some direct data collection
among the Iroquois in addition to the armchair variety of research), worked
under conditions not entirely unlike those of SETI researchers today; limita-
tions in technology (specifcally transportation and communications technolo-
gies) dramatically restricted the types of interaction accessible to social scientists
interested in contacting and understanding a distant other. Communication
was slow, requiring weeks or months for anthropologists in the United States or
Britain to request and then receive information from individuals (often mission-
aries) living in distant places. When data were eventually received, such as the
kinship data collected by Morgan in the mid-19th century from numerous parts
of the world, interpretation was based largely upon theoretical frameworks and
assumptions that had a decidedly Western tingespecifcally, social Darwinism
and cultural evolution of a Spencerian variety, with their overtly teleologi-
cal underpinnings associated with progress. Tese frameworks and assump-
tions were difcult to test using the methods of direct contact and participant
observation that would later become the foundation of ethnographic research.
1

1. Thomas R. Trautmann, Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1988); Herbert Spencer, Social Statics: The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness
Specied, and the First of Them Developed (1954; rpt. New York: A. M. Kelly, 1969), p. 1851.
Anthropology at a Distance
Although the 19th-century style of armchair anthropology was replaced by
ethnographic feldwork in the early 20th century, instances of anthropology at
a distance continued to occur, the most notable being Ruth Benedicts attempt
to develop an understanding of the seeminglyto American eyesintensely
alien Japanese during World War II, conducted under the auspices of the U.S.
government and published in 1946 as Te Chrysanthemum and the Sword.
2
In this chapter I explore one avenue through which anthropology and,
more specifcally, the subdiscipline of cultural or social anthropology can
contribute to SETI research. Michael A. G. Michaud has noted that the
social sciences are an area of intellectual inquiry that has not been sufciently
tapped in reference to SETI.
3
Here, I want to suggest that one of the most
potent ways the social sciences in general and anthropology in particular can
contribute to SETI is through analogy, using an analysis of anthropologys
own history of contact as a framework for thinking about potential contact
with an extraterrestrial civilization. While it is extremely important to con-
template the content and type of interstellar message we might construct, it
is equally important to consider the context of interpretation in which such a
message will be conveyed and interpreted, as well as how any response might
be interpreted by scientists and others on planet Earth. Rather than simply
an act of discovery, initial contact with any extraterrestrial intelligence will
also create a new context in which knowledge is generated and understood.
Te context of initial contact will be formed on the basis of very limited data
and, inevitably, interpreted through the lenses of our own cultures and the
theoretical frameworks that are in vogue among intellectuals and others at
the time contact occurs.
In order to explicate this point, I will consider the type of anthropology
at a distance evident in the early and, to a lesser extent, middle years of the
discipline, focusing on the work of Ruth Benedict during World War II as
an example of how the complex interplay between assumptions, data, and
misinterpretations can become established as authoritative knowledge about
and understanding of an alien civilization. Te central point of this chapter is
that Japan, as a culture and a civilization, was not simply revealed by Benedict;
2. See Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Boston:
Houghton Mifin, 1946). It is important to recognize that Benedict herself was not trying to
represent the Japanese as incomprehensibly alien. Rather, her primary aim was to show that
if we understood the cultural logic at the foundation of Japanese society, we could understand
the behaviors and their motivations that seemed so alien to Americans during the war.
3. Michael A. G. Michaud, Contact with Alien Civilizations (New York: Copernicus Books, 2007),
p. 327.
131
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
it was in many respects created out of this interplay, at least as far as the
American perspective is concerned (and, although not specifcally relevant to
this paper, to some extent the Japanese perspective as well).
4
I will argue that
the initial contact and subsequent interaction between extraterrestrials and
humans (including SETI researchers, politicians, scholars outside of SETI,
and the general public) will involve a similar production of knowledge about
the alien other. Awareness of this hazard and the ability to refexively think
about our own role in constructing an alien culture, particularly where great
distances and time delays are insurmountable with current technology, are
of fundamental importance in reducing the risk of misunderstanding and
misinterpretation.
Ruth Benedict and the Invention of Japanese Culture
Anthropologist Marvin Harris has noted that the beginnings of anthropology
are to be found in the inspiration of the natural sciences and the scientifc
method. At the foundation of anthropology is an assumption that sociocul-
tural processes are governed by lawful principles that can be understood in
terms of causality and that are discoverable by an objective observer.
5
Early
formulations of culture grew out of the research of scholars who saw distinct
cultures as relatively bounded entities, and they posited culture as largely
deterministic, fundamentally shaping the behaviors and thought patterns of
the people inhabiting a particular context. Much recent work tends to see
culture as fuid and having very permeable boundaries (if we can really think
in terms of boundaries at all), conceptualizing it as a process of invention in
which particular cultures arise out of an intersubjective dialectic between
the individual and his or her social environment.
6
Te anthropologist is not
remote from this process but, instead, can become actively involved in the
invention of a particular cultureunderstood as an analytical category as
well as a popular framing of a particular social groupthrough translating,
interpreting, and writing about what he or she observes, as well as through
the daily interaction associated with the activity of feldwork.
4. To some extent, even the perspective of postwar Japanese citizens on their national cul-
ture has been inuenced by Benedicts assessment; see Sonia Ryang, Japan and National
Anthropology: A Critique (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p. 29.
5. Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 1.
6. Roy Wagners The Invention of Culture, rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) is
one study among many that have addressed this issue over roughly the past 30 years.
132
Anthropology at a Distance
Nowhere, perhaps, is the issue of the anthropologist herself as research
instrument more evident than in the studies Ruth Benedict conducted during
World War II on Japanese culture. To begin, Benedicts work is, if not exactly
armchair anthropology, a latter-day expression of anthropology at a dis-
tance. As most anthropologists and other scholars who work on Japan know,
Benedict was commissioned in the early 1940s by the U.S. government to
provide a report that would explain Japanese behavior and could thus be used
to predict enemy responses during what was, by 1944, the anticipated inva-
sion of Japan. In other words, her work was to be an explanatory guide in the
project of social engineering that would become the Occupation of Japan.
Considerably less well known among the general public, and even among
some scholars with interests in Japanese culture, is how Benedicts research
was done. First, Benedict did not conduct a study of Japanese culture or
society through traditional ethnographic methods of participant observation;
instead, due to the war, she was forced to turn to what appeared to be the next
best thingAmericans of Japanese descent who were confned to internment
camps in the desert Southwest. Obviously, in retrospect, this should raise red
fags about Benedicts study. As Eiko Ikegami recently pointed out, Benedicts
research subjects, when faced with an authority fgure representing the same
government that had removed them from their homes and imprisoned them
in the camps, were passive and cautious in their replies to her questions.
7

Interestingly, this issue was not addressed by most scholars who reviewed
Benedicts book; a few noted the problem, but in general it was overlooked
or ignored. It is only recently that open discussion has ensued about how
Benedicts research contains fawed conclusions in part because the conditions
of her data collection were limited by her inability to make direct contact
with individuals within the Japanese cultural context.
For my purposes here, it is not important to go into details about the
empirical and interpretive errors that exist in Te Chrysanthemum and the
Sword. Ryang notes many of the problems and demonstrates that Benedicts
development of linguistic data from Japanese is not supported by either
sociological or historical data. She tends to select words from her informants
and from literature without contextualizing the terms or understanding how
they are conceptually used by Japanese, but in her work these terms tend to
become keywords for representing and understanding Japanese culture and
behavior.
8
More important than the specifc errors in Benedicts research is
7. Eiko Ikegami, Shame and the Samurai: Institutions, Trustworthiness, and Autonomy in the Elite
Honor Culture, Social Research 70, no. 4 (2003): 13511378, esp. p. 1370.
8. Ryang, Japan and National Anthropology, p. 33.
133
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
the fact that she takes a totalizing approach to representing Japan: specifc
words, ideas, or concepts evident in sources such as Japanese literature are
used to broadly explain, often in a single brushstroke, all or most elements of
Japanese behavior. In part this approach is a consequence of the theoretical
framework Benedict uses, as well as a general lack of detailed empirical data
about Japan upon which to base her conclusions.
While the studys faws are signifcant, a more salient point is that Te
Chrysanthemum and the Sword becomes, as Ryang notes, paradigmatic,
playing a crucial role in the postwar social science discourse on Japan both
among Japanese and non-Japanese scholars.
9
Indeed, so thorough was the
assumption that Benedict had accurately presented Japanese culture that it
was only rarely noted that her research had not focused on Japanese people.
Attitudes toward Te Chrysanthemum and the Sword at the time of its publi-
cation are summed up in a 1947 review written by John Embree, himself a
well-known anthropologist of Japan, in which he states: Dr. Benedict, with
the soft words of a fox spirit, leads the reader into the forest of Japan and
before he knows it she has him bewitched into believing that he understands
and is familiar with every root and branch of Japanese culture.
10
When I frst read this comment, I thought it might be sarcastic, but
throughout the review Embrees only real criticism of Benedicts book con-
cerns her failure to recognize that Japan is an old culture while the United
States is a new one, itself a rather dubious observation since Japan underwent
a radical social transformation in the second half of the 19th century.
11
He
goes on to state, Te frontiersman and the nomad are more likely to be
individualistic braggarts than is the village bound peasant who must face his
same neighbor day after day. A man of an old peasant culture such as the
Japanese is likely to be more meticulous in his etiquette and sense of recipro-
cal duty.
12
In Embrees view, Benedict allowed us to gain entrance into an
almost impenetrable cultural forest vastly diferent from ours because it
9. Ryang, Japan and National Anthropology, p. 48.
10. John Embree, Review of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Far Eastern Survey 16, no. 1
(1947): 11.
11. In one sense, Embree is correct that Japan has a much longer history than the United States,
but the U.S. Constitution remained in force throughout a period in which Japan experienced two
radical social transformations: the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and the industrialization of Japanese
society following the U.S. Occupation, with its associated political and social changes. The second
of these transformations was happening as Embree was writing, and both raise questions about
the meaningfulness of describing Japan as old and the United States as new.
12. Embree, Review of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, p. 11.
134
Anthropology at a Distance
was a peasant society based upon village social organization (Im not quite
sure where Tokyo and Osaka ft into that forest) as opposed to urban, indi-
vidualistic American social organization. And she did this while dealing with
the considerable limitations that were inevitable at the time of her research.
13
Interestingly enough, in another review where he compares Benedicts
book to a book by Andrew W. Lind on Japanese communities in Hawaii,
Embree takes for granted the idea that Benedict did, in fact, explicate Japanese
cultural patterns and behaviors through her research.
14
Indeed, Benedict,
although clearly identifying her feldwork locale, ultimately represents her
work as if it were about Japanese rather than Japanese-American people and
cultural values, and, as is apparent in Embrees review and those of other schol-
ars at the time, this representation went largely uncontested,
15
although John
Morris in his 1947 review points out that in normal circumstances no one
would think of writing a serious book without frst spending a considerable
time observing at frst hand the actual behavior of the people concerned.
16

Morris quickly puts this problem aside and lauds Te Chrysanthemum and
the Sword as the most important contemporary book yet written on Japan.
Here, for the frst time, is a serious attempt to explain why the Japanese
behave the way they do.
17
Tese examples clearly demonstrate that Te Chrysanthemum and the
Sword became, as noted above, the cornerstone of the ethnographic, and
nonethnographic, corpus of Western scholarship on Japan, despite its lack
of sound empirical data. Benedicts contemporaries largely took her work at
face value and accepted as a given the idea that she had produced a study of
Japanese culture. Te problems inherent in having to do anthropology at a
distance were overlooked by Benedicts colleagues and by many of those who
13. It is worth noting that Embree backed away from his support for Benedicts work a few years
later, shortly before his death in the early 1950s. See Ryang, Japan and National Anthropology,
pp. 3540.
14. John Embree, Review of Hawaiis Japanese and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,
American Sociological Review 12, no. 2 (1947): 245246.
15. Erwin H. Ackerknecht, Review of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, The Quarterly Review
of Biology 22, no. 3 (1947): 246; Paul H. Clyde, Review of The Chrysanthemum and the
Sword, The American Political Science Review 41, no. 3 (1947): 585586; Embree, Review
of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword; Raglan, Review of The Chrysanthemum and the
Sword, Man 48 (1948): 35.
16. John Morris, Review of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Pacic Affairs 20, no. 2 (1947):
208210, esp. p. 209.
17. Morris, Review of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, p. 208.
135
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
became interested in Japanese culture; instead of being challenged, her book
shaped the major questions posed and studies produced by Japanologists,
most notably the focus on the Japanese psyche or personality (self ) that
dominated research on Japan into the 1990s and continues at present.
18
By
the 1980s, anthropologists began moving away from Benedicts construction
of Japanese culture, but her work has been cited hundreds of times and con-
tinues to be cited, particularly in cross-cultural psychological studies, not as
a book about Japanese Americans during World War II but as a book about
Japanese people and their culture.
19
In essence, the publication of Te Chrysanthemum and the Sword initiated
a process by which the Western concept of Japanese culture was invented.
Benedicts work identifed what would be considered the basic elements and
core values associated with Japanese culture and the Japanese psyche for years
to come, and a great deal of the scholarship produced during that period sup-
ported Benedicts conclusions, either directly or indirectly. As people read and
followed her work with further research, analysis, and publication, a sense of
Japanese culture and Japanese behavior being accurately and completely rep-
resented in the basic ideas put forth by Benedict prevailed in communities of
scholars working in areas such as cross-cultural psychology and cross-cultural
communication, as well as in the broader community of nonscholars who
were simply interested in Japan. In short, Benedicts at-a-distance take on
Japan became Japan itself for many, and perhaps the majority, of Americans
throughout most of the second half of the 20th century. Tis infuence cannot
be overstated: Benedicts work was central to the U.S. governments approach
to reorganizing and engineering Japanese society after the war and was widely
read by an American public interested in understanding the enemy they had
just conquered and whose country they were now occupying.
However, what was being created was not a true understanding of Japan,
if such an understanding of any culture is actually possible. Rather, what
was created was a notion of Japanese culture that refected values and psy-
chological orientationswith an emphasis on the concept of shamethat
seemed important to Benedict. Indeed, the book is an application of theories
she developed in an earlier work, Patterns of Culture, in which she used psy-
chological idioms (although not Freudian in nature) as a means of creating
18. Ryang, Japan and National Anthropology, passim.
19. Perhaps most striking is that when the book is cited today, its conclusions are often pre-
sented as constants of Japanese culture, impervious to historical circumstances, such as the
inuence of American concepts of individualism that became common during and after the
Occupation, despite the fact that the book was published more than 60 years ago.
136
Anthropology at a Distance
confgurations or categories of cultural types that, in turn, were imprinted
in the minds of those living in a particular cultural milieu. In other words,
Benedicts understanding of how culture works and what culture is should be
seen as a direct result of the academic context, with its considerable interest
in psychology, in which she was trained at Columbia during the 1920s and
which continued to be a signifcant focus as her career developed.
Consequences of Anthropology at a Distance for SETI
Tis foray into the history of anthropology has a direct bearing on how
we might think about an encounter with an extraterrestrial technological
civilization. Te wartime conditions under which Benedict conducted her
research eliminated the possibility of doing true ethnography in the form
of participant observation and long-term feldwork. Indeed, few of the data
she relied on were actually collected by her; instead she borrowed data col-
lected by psychological anthropologist Geofrey Gorer from interned Japanese
Americans in the relocation camps during the war as well as data gathered
by another psychological anthropologist, Weston La Barre, although she did
collect some interview data of her own.
20
As noted above, given the lack of empirical data and the limited scholarly
resources available on Japanese culture and behavior,
21
as well as her general
tendency toward emphasizing (psychologically oriented) theory over data,
Benedict essentially took the little she had and worked it into the theoretical
framework she had developed in her earlier book, Patterns of Culture, which
categorized Native American cultures on the basis of personality traits associ-
ated with a particular group of people. Benedicts study of Japan, from afar,
set in motion a conceptualization of Japan and the Japanese people that has
infuenced scholarship and policy-making related to that society up to the
present day. And a great deal of what she wrote has turned out to be either a
very simplistic representation/explanation of Japanese culture or fundamen-
tally inaccurate; yet her work continues to be infuential.
If we turn to a bit of speculation about our initial encounter with an
extraterrestrial intelligence, it is not difcult to imagine an analogous process
20. Ryang, Japan and National Anthropology, p. 17; Geoffrey Gorer, Themes in Japanese Culture,
New York Academy of Sciences, ser. II, vol. 5 (1943): 106124; Weston La Barre, Some
Observations on Character Structure in the Orient: The Japanese, Psychiatry 8, no. 3 (1945):
319342. Neither Gorer nor La Barre were trained as Japan scholars.
21. See Ryang, Japan and National Anthropology, p. 16.
137
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
occurring. Te frst scientists to encounter a signal from an extraterrestrial
intelligence will likely receive a limited amount of data. If we simply capture a
signal that is not directly aimed at attracting the attention of an alien civiliza-
tion (such as our own), then it may be extremely difcult to develop a clear
sense of what we are looking at. Tis is not simply a matter of translation;
even if we can infer specifc meanings of linguistic constructs that correspond
to something in our own language, we will have no cultural framework with
which to interpret how those meanings apply to an alien society. Even math-
ematics, the language of science, is not without its own difculties in terms
of interpretation.
22
In the case of Benedict, who knew she was dealing with
another human society that had the same basic structures (albeit diferent in
their manifestations) as American societysystems associated with religion,
kinship, government, etc.a lack of sufcient data and an inherent tendency
to ft an alien culture into a framework that made sense to an American mind
led to a casting of Japanese culture along particular lines that had many faws.
Te odds are that, without an understanding of an extraterrestrial cul-
tureone derived from hard data rigorously analyzedwe will interpret
what we fnd in terms of values, structures, and patterns of behavior associated
with our own culture (itself a problematic idea since there is no single human
culture on Earth). In some respects, we have already started this process in
our reasonable attempt to think about the nature of ETIthe notion of an
asymmetry of age between ETI and ourselves is based on an assumption that
the rate of progress on Earth should be fairly standard elsewhere.
23
However,
given the diferences that exist among human cultures in terms of how we
perceive, interpret, and categorize our surroundings, it is reasonable to think
that a truly alien society would consist of beings who do these things in ways
unlike those of humans.
24
Perhaps these diferences, when combined with
distinct biology, would lead to rates of development much faster, or much
slower, than has been the case on Earth. Te capacity to do culture in a
relatively consistent way among human beings, even with all of the diferences
22. See Carl L. DeVito, On the Universality of Human Mathematics, in Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, ed. Douglas A. Vakoch (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2011), pp. 439448; and C. L. DeVito and R. T. Oehrle, A Language Based on the
Fundamental Facts of Science, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 43, no. 12 (1990):
561568.
23. See Douglas A. Vakoch, Integrating Active and Passive SETI Programs, in Vakoch, ed.,
Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, pp. 253278.
24. Douglas Vakoch, Culture in the Cosmos, Space.com, 3 May 2007, available at http://www.
space.com/searchforlife/seti_culture_070503.html.
138
Anthropology at a Distance
we fnd in specifcally how culture is done, is heavily dependent upon a
common set of sense organs. Neurological studies have shown that diferential
experiences and forms of stimulation during developmental processes shape
the connections among neurons and thus infuence the construction of the
neural networks that are basic to human behavior and thought. What would
culture look like when applied to a being with diferent sense organs and
possibly a very diferent natural and social environment from ours?
If the frst message we encounter happens to be an intentional attempt on
the part of an alien civilization to contact another intelligent species, then it is
reasonable to expect that such a message will be limited in content. Douglas
Vakoch notes that the few messages humans have already sent into space
have been rather limited, and a bit warped, in terms of their representation
of our own civilization, showing chiefy the brighter sides of humanity and
ignoring social ills such as war and poverty.
25
Even if extraterrestrials try to
represent themselves in an objective manner, any intentional message we
receive will almost certainly have subjective qualities and represent an alien
civilization in a way that will infuence how we construct an understanding
of their messages and, beyond that, of their civilization.
Regardless of the type of communication received, we humans are most
unlikely to receive a message and simply take it at face value without speculat-
ing on the nature of those who sent it. Benedict, like armchair anthropologists
before her, was a trained interpreter and theorist of culture and behavior,
but the conditions of her research on Japan and her lack of understanding of
the Japanese language made it difcult for her to gain an accurate picture of
the culture and people about which she wrote. Furthermore, her subjective
interests in a particular theoretical framework infuenced her management
of the data she did obtain and led her to organize her understanding of
Japan in a way that ftted her assumptions about how cultures work. Tis is
understandable, particularly when one is dealing with limited data. However,
this process will not be restricted to a few scholars and policy-makers and
gradually released to the public.
26
Instead, as Seth Shostak points out, should
contact occur, knowledge of the event will quickly become evident to a wide
audience, most likely well before SETI scientists are even certain that the
25. Vakoch, Integrating Active and Passive SETI Programs, pp. 253278.
26. For an interesting discussion of some policy issues related to SETI, see Mark L. Lupisella,
Pragmatism, Cosmocentrism, and Proportional Consultations for Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, in Vakoch, ed., Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
pp. 319332.
139
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
signal has really come from an extraterrestrial intelligence.
27
Contact will
become widely known and refected upon by media pundits long before
anthropologists and other scientists whose expertise is the interpretation of
diferent cultures are able to understand and analyze whatever content might
exist in a signal. In short, the invention of an alien culture will begin almost
the moment that contact is made.
If we ever do receive a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence, we
will be faced with the same problem that Benedict and earlier anthropologists
working at a distance encountered: limited data. In addition, we will face
the problem of a time lagbut not the lag of several months experienced
by armchair anthropologists of the 19th century. Instead, we will deal with
time lags of years, decades, centuries, or millennia between message and
response. If we think about the study of Japan, the course of which was so
heavily infuenced by the work of Benedict even though access to new data
has been readily available over the past 60 years, it is easy to imagine how
long stretches with few or no data could lead humans to create an image of an
extraterrestrial civilization based largely upon our own theories and expecta-
tions about how culture and behavior work. Michaud notes that scientists
should not let belief or preference triumph over evidence, but in the case
of extraterrestrials this will be a challenging task.
28
Indeed, the vast majority
of what we will know about ET, if contact happens, will be our own inven-
tions based upon very limited data and then elaborated over the long waiting
periods between contacts.
27. Seth Shostak, Contact: What Happens if a Signal is Found?, Space.com, 17 August 2006,
available at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_whatif_060817.html.
28. Michael A. G. Michaud, The Relevance of Human History, in Vakoch, ed., Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, p. 315.
140
CHAPTER NINE
Contact Considerations
A Cross-Cultural Perspective
Douglas Raybeck
Introduction
Within the scientifc community as well as in the popular press and among
science-fction writers, the existence of extraterrestrials and the possibility of
communicating with them have long been matters of intense interest. Tis
interest has led to such projects as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(SETI), which continues to be a focus of attention for many scientists
despite the challenges of fnding sustained funding for this feld of research.
1

Practitioners of the physical, social, and behavioral sciences have all theo-
rized and speculated about the nature of extraterrestrial intelligence and the
problems involved in inter-sentient communication.
2
Te general consensus
has been that the universe is very likely to host other intelligent beings, that
some of these will be more technologically advanced than humans, and that
some are trying even now to locate other intelligences.
In the science-fction community, images of extraterrestrials have varied
in form, intelligence, and intention. Tey range from the benefcent aliens of
Julian May, who wish only to elevate humanity and facilitate our participation
1. Ronald D. Ekers et al., eds., SETI 2020: A Roadmap for the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence (Mountain View, CA: SETI Press, 2002); Philip Morrison, John Billingham, and John
Wolfe, eds., The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: SETI (Washington, DC: NASA SP-419,
1977); Albert A. Harrison and Alan C. Elms, Psychology and the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, Behavioral Science 35 (1990): 207218; Douglas Raybeck, Problems in
Extraterrestrial Communication, paper presented at the 9th annual CONTACT conference,
held on 58 March 1992, in Palo Alto, California.
2. See, for example, Carl Sagan, ed., Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI)
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1973); and for one example of the many discussions of ETI
by social and behavioral scientists, see Albert A. Harrison, Thinking Intelligently About
Extraterrestrial Intelligence: An Application of Living Systems Theory, Behavioral Science 38,
no. 3 (1993): 189217.
Contact Considerations
in an intergalactic milieu, to the malevolent extraterrestrials of Greg Bear,
who travel about the universe locating intelligent life-forms and destroying
them before they can become future competitors.
3
Generally, however, images
of aliens in fction and within the scientifc community are positive. It is
widely believed that if a sentient form can achieve the degree of civilization
necessary to support interstellar communication, it is unlikely to be charac-
terized by hostile intentions.
In all likelihood, should we have an encounter with an alien intelligence,
that experience will be neither physical nor continuous. Rather we are most
apt to fnd either a message or a remote probe.
4
In either event, acknowledging
the current strictures of space-time and of Relativity Teory, there will be a
signifcant lag between exchanges of information. Given the improbability of
physical contact with aliens, there would seem to be little chance for hostile
confrontations, even if intelligent extraterrestrials had untoward motives, as
is quite possible.
5
Instead the pertinent question appears to be how will we respond to the
knowledge, and its inherent challenge, that there are other intelligences
out there? Tis paper seeks to explore that issue by utilizing analogies from
Western colonial adventures in Asia, the Americas, and New Zealand to con-
struct difering scenarios of contact. Our own sociocultural variability may
be as important as the diversity of those who may contact us. As we shall see,
some cultures appear better equipped to deal with the profound questions
likely to be posed by another intelligent life-form.
Te relevance of anthropology to SETI has been well argued by Steven
Dick and by John Traphagan in other chapters of this volume. Kathryn
Denning has also demonstrated the pertinence of archaeology to several of
the issues with which SETI is concerned, and her argument that SETI begins
at home is clearly one that the present chapter supports.
6
3. Julian May, The Metaconcert (New York: Ballantine Books, 1987); Julian May, The Surveillance
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1987); Greg Bear, The Forge of God (New York: TOR, 1987).
4. See, for example, Albert A. Harrison, After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life
(New York: Plenum, 1997).
5. Douglas Raybeck, Predator-Prey Models and Contact Considerations, paper presented at the
11th annual Contact conference, held 1820 March 1994 in Santa Clara, California.
6. Steven J. Dick, The Role of Anthropology in SETI: A Historical View, chapter 3 in this volume;
John W. Traphagan, Anthropology at a Distance: SETI and the Production of Knowledge
in the Encounter with an Extraterrestrial Other, chapter 8 in this volume; Kathryn E.
Denning, Learning to Read: Interstellar Message Decipherment from Archaeological and
Anthropological Perspectives, chapter 6 in this volume.
143
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Colonial Cultural Contacts
For many centuries European societies had comparatively few technologi-
cal advantages over the developed societies of the East. Asian cultures were
technologically superior to Western societies in many respects until the early
modern period, when Europeans began to excel in shipbuilding, cartography,
navigation, and the design and manufacture of artillery. By coupling naval and
military superiority with good management, state support, and often ruthless
policies, the West was able to impose its will upon other cultures and to extract
a great deal of wealth.
7

I believe physical encounters with extraterrestrials are highly unlikely, but
I am concerned with the manner in which we will discern and react to the
discovery of a nonhuman intelligence. A brief review of some of the more
notorious examples of European and U.S. colonialism may enrich our dis-
cussion of the possibilities of frst contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.
Of particular interest here is how the members of various cultures perceived
and responded to outsiders who often possessed technologies that made them
seem magical. Te examples appear instructive.
Aztec
Te cultural contact between the Aztecs and the conquistadors is perhaps the
most extreme example on record of misinterpreted intentions. At the time of
contact with the Spanish in the 16th century, the Aztecs had created a highly
stratifed empire with tributary states and a great deal of specialization. Tey
were noted for literacy, a complex calendar, magnifcent architectural struc-
tures, and other accomplishments.
Aztec mythology included a deity called Quetzalcoatl who, it was
believed, would come from the East with pale countenance and strange
beasts. When Hernn Corts arrived in 1519, the Aztec ruler at the time,
Montezuma II, and members of the priestly class declared that he was a god
and that his companions also were divine.
8
Tis misperception was encour-
aged by Corts, who began to pass himself of as that god. Montezuma
identifed Corts as a deity in part because the explorer had landed in
Mexico on the calendar day of Quetzalcoatls birth. Tis timing was no
7. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Random House, 1983); Robert Van Niel, Java
Under the Cultivation Systems: Collected Writings (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1992).
8. George C. Vaillant, Aztecs of Mexico: Origin, Rise and Fall of the Aztec Nation (1941; New York:
Doubleday, 1944).
144
Contact Considerations
accident. Corts had heard tales of Quetzalcoatl and had gambled on being
mistaken for the Aztec god.
9
Corts had already made an alliance with a traditional enemy of the Aztecs,
the Indians of Tlaxcala. No doubt the Spanish found the Tlaxcalans worthy as
allies because they had found them worthy as opponents. When the Tlaxcalans
had been wrestling with the question of the possibly divine nature of the
Spanish, one of the more experimentally minded war leaders had resolved the
issue by holding a Spanish soldier under water until he drowned.
10
Unlike previous Aztec rulers, who are described as great warriors,
Montezuma II was a weak and indecisive man, more interested in sor-
cery and philosophy than in war. Instead of attacking the Spaniards, he
tried to assert power over them by trickery, magic, and gifts; when these
means failed, Montezuma allowed Corts to enter the island capital of
Tenochtitln unchallenged and received him in his court. Montezuma was
taken prisoner without resistance, but the brutal conduct of the invaders
aroused the anger of the citys inhabitants. Te Aztecs managed to drive the
foreigners out for a short while, but during the ensuing battle, Montezuma
died under mysterious circumstances; he was killed either by the Spaniards
or by his own people.
11
Moral: Try to assess the new guys on the block accurately, and dont give
them any opportunity to exploit existing divisions. Indeed, the likelihood
that many nations will seek to gain a monopoly on interactions with extrater-
restrial intelligence is apt to be one of humanitys greatest problems.
Japanese
Until the middle of the 19th century, Japan was an agrarian, peasant society
ruled by warlords (daimyo) in the service of an overlord (shogun). Daimyo,
in turn, were served by the samurai, a traditional warrior class whose name
derives from the Japanese word for service. Medieval samurai were generally
illiterate, rural landowners who farmed between battles. Some developed the
necessary skills for bureaucratic service, but most did not. During the shogu-
nate of the Tokugawa family (16001868), the samurai as a class were trans-
formed into military bureaucrats and were required to master administrative
9. Buddy Levy, Conquistador: Hernn Corts, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs
(New York: Bantam Books, 2008).
10. Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1982).
11. Warwick Bray, Montezuma II, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Grolier Online at http://gme.
grolier.com/article?assetid=0197695-0 (accessed 28 June 2013).
145
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
skills as well as military arts. As hereditary warriors, they were governed by
a code of ethics: bushido, meaning the way of the warrior, defned service
and conduct appropriate to their status as elite members of Japanese society.
12
Te frst European to reach Japan was a Portuguese explorer named
Ferno Mendes Pinto, who arrived there in 1543; just two years later the
Portuguese established the frst trade route between Japan and Europe.
Shortly afterward, Jesuit missionaries introduced Roman Catholicism.
Christianity conficted with feudal loyalties, however, and by 1639 had
been completely banned.
13
At that point all Europeans except the Dutch
were expelled from Japan, and the Dutch traders permitted to remain were
interned on an artifcial island so that the Japanese might better study their
economic practices.
14
Te Japanese could accomplish all this largely because
they were a centralized polity.
Japans traditional class structure placed merchants at the bottom of a
four-tiered system, where they were carefully controlled by the ruling elite.
Tis privileged class, while dependent upon merchants for trade, feared their
economic power.
15
Te Japanese class system and other cultural elements had
been adapted from Chinese practices. Indeed, for centuries Japan had bor-
rowed signifcant cultural elements from China, including aspects of Chinese
science, philosophy, and literacy.
16
Te social structure was strongly patrilineal, with a rule of primogeniture:
the eldest son inherited the family land, and younger sons moved elsewhere
to seek employment. Marion Levy has argued that this combination of fea-
tures made it possible for Japan to modernize rapidly. Not only did Japan
have prior experience emulating and adopting the cultural patterns of others,
but its social organization created a cadet class of younger brothers ready to
be trained for industry, and its merchants were waiting to be freed from the
economic and behavioral fetters that bound them.
17
12. William B. Hauser, Samurai, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Grolier Online at http://gme.
grolier.com/article?assetid=0255830-0 (accessed 28 June 2013).
13. Nam-lin Hur, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan: Buddhism, Anti-Christianity, and the
Danka System (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).
14. Harumi Befu, Japan: An Anthropological Introduction (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing
Company, 1971).
15. Chie Nakane, Japanese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).
16. Milton W. Meyer, Japan: A Concise History (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleeld, 1993).
17. Marion J. Levy, Contrasting Factors in the Modernization of China and Japan, in Economic
Growth: Brazil, India, Japan, ed. Simon Kuznets et al. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1955), pp. 496536.
146
Contact Considerations
In 1868, in reaction to U.S. Commodore Matthew Perrys incursions of
the mid-1850s and Japans consequent concessions to the West, Japanese
samurai overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate and reestablished the rule of
the Meiji emperor. What followed was one of the most dramatic examples of
sociocultural change in history. Within two generations, Japan transformed
itself from a feudal backwater to a world power by making major changes in
its traditional culture and social structure.
Moral: Here the example suggests that prior experience with borrowing
cultural elements may promote a fexible response to sociocultural challenges,
even when they involve signifcant adaptation.
Chinese
China is a highly patricentric culture in which descent is patrilineal, power
is patripotestal, inheritance follows the male line, major ancestors included
in ancestor worship are exclusively male, and Confucianism exalts manli-
ness and masculine virtues.
18
When Europeans were still wearing urine-
cured hides and painting their faces blue, China was already a complex,
centralized polity.
Te name Middle Kingdom expressed Chinas self-image as a nation posi-
tioned midway between heaven and hell.
19
Because China dominated the region,
it demanded and received preferential treatment from neighbors it viewed as
vassal states. Indeed, several states in Southeast Asia paid annual tribute and
routinely requested assistance from China to mediate regional disputes.
20
When Western infuence frst appeared in the shape of travelers such as
Marco Polo, it was seen by the Chinese as a harmless novelty. As Western
governments became aware of the vast resources China possessed, they
pressed its rulers to open up the country to trade; but the Chinese contin-
ued to believe that all outsiders were barbarians compared to residents of
the Middle Kingdom. As late as 1793, Chinas Qianlong emperor rejected
the idea of trade with Europe on the grounds that the West had nothing
18. Arthur Cotterell and David Morgan, Chinas Civilization: A Survey of Its History, Arts, and
Technology (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975); Joel Coye, Jon Livingston, and Jean
Highland, eds., China Yesterday and Today (New York: Bantam Books, 1984).
19. David Bonavia, The Chinese (New York: Penguin Books, 1980); Robert Hunt, ed., Personalities
and Cultures: Readings in Psychological Anthropology (Garden City, NY: The Natural History
Press, 1967); William H. McNeill and Jean W. Sedlar, eds., Classical China (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1970).
20. Donald K. Swearer, Southeast Asia (Guilford, CT: Dushkin Publishing Group, 1984).
147
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
his country needed.
21
Tis attitude could not long be maintained, how-
ever, and by the early 20th century, European hegemony in Asia was well
established.
22
Te Qing emperors had attempted to conduct diplomatic and com-
mercial relations with the European powers within the traditional frame-
work of the tribute system and had sought to confne foreign trade to the
single port of Canton in the south. Te British, the most active European
traders, were also among the most active smugglers of opium into China.
Te seizure and destruction by Chinese authorities of all foreign opium at
Canton precipitated the First Opium War of 18391842. At its conclusion,
the emperor was forced by the Treaty of Nanjing to capitulate to a British
naval force, cede Hong Kong to Britain, open several ports to unrestricted
trade, and promise to conduct all future foreign relations on the basis of
equality. China was also compelled to recognize the principle of extraterri-
toriality, by which Westerners in China were subject only to the jurisdiction
of their own countrys consular court.
23
As a result of these events, China
was treated by Westerners as politically and economically inferior until the
mid-20th century.
Moral: Chinas unwillingness to deal with European powers as equals and
its inability to perceive the threat implicit in Western technology had serious
repercussions, some of which still infuence contemporary Chinese attitudes
toward trade and outsiders.
24
Iroquois
Te matrilineal Iroquois nations were among the most politically complex
cultures in North America. When Europeans frst encountered them in the
early 17th century, the Iroquois were composed of fve separate nations:
the Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Mohawk; somewhat later the
Tuscarora also came to be considered as part of the Iroquois Confederacy.
21. Joel Coye, Jon Livingston, and Jean Highland, eds., China Yesterday and Today (New York:
Bantam Books, 1984); Walter A. Fairservis, Jr., The Origins of Oriental Civilization (New York:
Mentor Books, 1959).
22. Michel Oksenberg, The Issue of Sovereignty in the Asian Historical Context, in Problematic
Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities, ed. Stephen D. Krasner (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2001), pp. 83103, esp. p. 89.
23. Howard J. Wechsler, China, History of, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Grolier Online at
http://gme.grolier.com/article?assetid=0061010-0 (accessed 29 June 2013).
24. Sumie Okazaki, E. J. R. David, and Nancy Abelmann, Colonialism and Psychology of Culture,
Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2, no. 1 (2008): 90106.
148
Contact Considerations
Living in fortifed villages, they raised corn, hunted game, and controlled a
territory ranging from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi Valley, as far north
as the St. Lawrence Valley.
25
Traditionally, Iroquois women were the principal participants in agricul-
ture and were also active in some aspects of governance. Iroquois men traveled
frequently, sometimes for war parties but more often to engage in diplomacy.
Te Iroquois Confederacy was governed by 50 sachems. Te ruling council
did not interfere with individual tribes, which were overseen by sachem rep-
resentatives, but it did make policy for the Confederacy. Council decisions
were unanimous and required consensus. Not surprisingly, oratory was valued
and the Iroquois were widely regarded as skilled public speakers.
26
In the 17th century the Iroquois rejected the European missionaries who
had hoped to convert them to Christianity. After access to frearms was made
possible by divisions between the European powers, the Iroquois, whose
military tactics were often superior, battled European soldiers to a stalemate.
Both the French and English regarded the Iroquois as the most diplomatically
astute and militarily dangerous of all the northeastern groups with which they
came into contact.
27
Further, the Iroquois, while eager to possess European
technology, were selective in their approach to cultural borrowing. Tey took
those elements they wanted, such as frearms, tools, and tribute; but, unlike
many other Native American tribes, they refused to emulate European culture
until long after the original contact period.
Te Iroquois tended to support the English against the French, but increas-
ingly they found advantage in playing one foreign power of against the other.
Tis strategy foundered during the Revolutionary War, when the Americans,
incensed by Iroquois support for England, attacked Iroquois villages using
tactics similar to those employed by Native Americans, and with a degree of
viciousness that has seldom been equaled.
28
Moral: Te Iroquois initially responded to European incursions as well as
any of the cultures I have discussed thus far. Teir contact with and openness
to other cultures, their fexibility, and their resourcefulness initially stood
them in good stead. Ultimately, however, the Iroquois were simply overpow-
ered by a force that was numerically and technologically superior.
25. James W. Bradley, Evolution of the Onondaga Iroquois: Accommodating Change, 15001655
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005).
26. Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Vintage Books, 1972).
27. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca.
28. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca.
149
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
-
Maori
Te Mori of New Zealand speak a language related to both Tahitian and
Hawaiian. Tey are probably descended from travelers who left Hawaii and
who eventually reached the islands they called Aotearoa sometime around AD
900.
29
At the time of Captain James Cooks visit in 1769, the Mori popula-
tion was an estimated 100,000 to 250,000, divided into about 50 tribes, each
occupying separate territories. Te Mori were village-dwelling gardeners
who stored sweet-potato crops. Tree social classes existed: aristocrats, com-
moners, and slaves captured in war. Diferences in rank were associated with
supernatural power, or mana. Religious knowledge and activities were also
graded, with priests (tohunga) functioning as key fgures. Traditional art forms
included decorative wood carvingsuch as those seen on Mori longhouses
and great canoespoetry and storytelling, chanting, dancing, and singing.
By the end of the 18th century, European seal and whale hunters were
establishing shore bases on both islands. Soon after came traders in search of
timber and fax. Inevitably, perhaps, a series of clashes followed in which the
Mori were very badly treated: reports of atrocities committed by sailors and
adventurers became so alarming to the Anglican Church that it established
a mission and then petitioned the British government to appoint a resident
administrator of the islands in 1833.
By then, however, the Mori had already come to regard Westerners as
dangerous and untrustworthy. One of the frst commodities they traded for
in quantity was weaponry, and in 1825 they managed to rebuf the frst seri-
ous British attempt at colonization. Mori were accustomed to organized
confict, and many of their villages were located on hilltops, palisaded and
surrounded with fghting trenches.
30
When the British regiments attacked,
they were met by accurate gunfre from both trenches and palisade. Te
Mori took great pride in their ability to repel British troops, and on one
notorious occasion they sent down gunpowder and musket balls to a com-
pany of British soldiers that, having run out of ammunition, was about to
break of hostilities.
31
Te process of colonization led, especially on the North Island, to clashes
with those Mori, who, with good cause, disputed the alleged purchase of land
by the New Zealand Company. Sporadic warfare broke out, and disorder and
uncertainty prevailed for some 12 years. But in time, British troops quelled
29. Robert C. Suggs, The Island Civilizations of Polynesia (New York: New American Library, 1960).
30. Caroline Phillips, Waihou Journeys: The Archaeology of 400 Years of Maori Settlement
(Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2000).
31. Suggs, The Island Civilizations of Polynesia.
150
Contact Considerations
the fre in the fern, as these Mori Wars were called, and Mori resistance
to British authority ceased. Te Treaty of Waitangi, which was signed on 6
February 1840 by some but not all of the Mori chiefs, gave the Mori a
disadvantageous position.
After the signing of the treaty came a long period of protest and gradual
adjustment. Mori morale was buoyed in part because there had been no
formal surrender but rather a negotiated accession. Te Mori now number
about 565,000 (2006 Census) and represent more than 14 percent of New
Zealands population. Recently, the New Zealand government made a settle-
ment with the Maori that addressed the inequities of the 1840 treaty and
provided compensation in the form of large land tracts and cash.
32
Generally,
New Zealanders of European descent have supported attempts to improve
the economic situation of the Mori people.
Moral: Te Mori resisted British incursions in a fashion that not only
earned the respect of their adversaries but also allowed them a pride that sus-
tained them when they were fnally overwhelmed by disease, superior technol-
ogy, and organization.
33
Reacting forcefully to clear injustice and violations
of reciprocity can eventually beneft a disadvantaged group.
Back to the Future
When I, and many others, began to express a professional interest in the pos-
sibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, we were often met by indulgent smiles.
As Douglas Vakoch does a fne job of demonstrating in chapter 12 of this
collection, our interest is neither new nor unwarranted; at the same time, as
Albert Harrison shows in chapter 11, this interest is not without a range of
accompanying concerns.
34
Most serious astronomers and cosmologists are convinced that we are
unlikely to be the only intelligent life in the universe. NASAs Kepler mission
32. Yvonne Tahana, Iwi Walks Path to Biggest Ever Treaty Settlement, The New Zealand Herald,
25 June 2008.
33. James H. Liu et al., Social Identity and the Perception of History: Cultural Representations of
Aotearoa/New Zealand, European Journal of Social Psychology 29, no. 8 (1999): 10211047.
34. See Douglas A. Vakoch, The Evolution of Extraterrestrials: The Evolutionary Synthesis and
Estimates of the Prevalence of Intelligence Beyond Earth, chapter 12 in this volume. On the
concerns that the topic of ETI raises, see Albert A. Harrison, Speaking for Earth: Projecting
Cultural Values Across Deep Space and Time, chapter 11 in this volume.
151
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
to identify Earth-like planets has already met with some signifcant success.
35

However, it is a big universe and scientists are split about the probability of
an actual encounter with an alien intelligence.
36
Nonetheless, all are gener-
ally agreed that such an encounter would have enormous consequences for
humanity, and most such scenarios are positive. It is this consensus that fuels
the SETI project. Once sponsored by the federal government, SETI now
operates with private funding.
SETI researchers are currently enlisting the assistance of interested com-
puter owners around the world. It is possible to download a program called
SETI@home, which in turn can download chunks of data from radio obser-
vatories and then analyze that data for a meaningful pattern that could suggest
intelligence.
37
Te results of the analysis are then returned by the computer
owner to the SETI scientists, providing them with a free and powerful means
to expand their information-processing base.
Probes and Possibilities
Given the strictures on space travel imposed by problems arising when one
approaches a percentage of the speed of light, our frst encounter with extra-
terrestrials will almost certainly be via a messaging system of some sort. I
believe the biggest obstacle to current searches involves the limitations of our
technology. It may not be possible to recognize that a message is being sent
since there are a variety of media that could be employed, and aliens may
well employ a medium that we have yet to recognize. How would we have
responded a century ago to radio transmissions, a half-century ago to micro-
waves, a quarter-century ago to binary laser pulses? Te obvious answer is we
wouldnt have been aware that there was anything to which to respond. We
cannot recognize and deal with messages conveyed through a medium that
we have yet to discover. Unfortunately, a technologically advanced civilization
35. William J. Borucki et al., Characteristics of Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler, II:
Analysis of the First Four Months of Data, The Astrophysical Journal 736, no. 1 (2011):
1111, available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.0541v2.
36. Harrison, After Contact; Sagan, ed., Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence; Seth
Shostak, Are We Alone?: Estimating the Prevalence of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, in
Civilizations Beyond Earth: Extraterrestrial Life and Society, ed. Douglas A. Vakoch and Albert A.
Harrison (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011), pp. 3142.
37. The SETI@home program can be found at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu.
152
Contact Considerations
may employ a very advanced medium, as a means of identifying species and
civilizations with which more promising exchanges might take place.
In addition to the purely technological problems with recognizing mes-
sages, there is the difculty of decoding them. Since alien intelligences have
necessarily developed in an alien environment, we can expect them and their
mental processes to be markedly diferent from our own, probably so diferent
as to impede communication.
38
Fortunately, while there is not space to discuss
the details here, there are means by which we may be able to overcome com-
munications problems, positing only that an alien intelligence can recognize
binary distinctions, a fundamental aspect of information processing.
39
Assuming that we recognize signals emanating from an intelligent extra-
terrestrial source, our next difculty will involve the enormous time lags in
sending and receiving messages. According to our present understanding, no
message can exceed the speed of light, and while that speed is nothing to be
challenged by a tortoise, the lag will necessarily be measured in years, pos-
sibly decades. Te strategic problems such a lag imposes are considerable and
have serious consequences for productive communications and for exchange.
Let me indulge in a fnal terrestrial parallel from the history of British colo-
nialism. A promising young administrator of the British East India Company
(BEIC), Stamford Rafes, was due to return to England, having served his
tour in Batavia in Indonesia.
40
He stopped at a fshing village on an island
in the Strait of Malacca and noted a large natural harbor in a location that
ensured access to both the East and the West and that could afect, if not
control, much of the shipping between the two. He immediately dispatched
a letter to the BEIC and Foreign Ofce requesting permission to establish a
port, and since it would be several months before he could receive a response,
he set about developing the port and area trade. In the mid-19th century,
Britain was heavily involved with the enormous Indian subcontinent and
had no desire to establish outposts in Southeast Asia. Further, Britain had
no wish to ofend or risk alienating its Dutch allies, who already had a strong
presence on the Malay Peninsula. Te answer returned to Rafes was no.
However, by this point the port was already making a signifcant proft and
challenging Malacca for primacy.
38. Douglas Raybeck, A Possible Solution to Communication Problems: Part 2, SETIQuest 2, no.
3 (1996): 911, esp. p. 10.
39. Douglas Raybeck, Problems in Extraterrestrial Communication, SETIQuest 2, no. 2 (1996):
1921.
40. Emily Hahn, Rafes of Singapore (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1946).
153
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Rafes believed the new circumstances of this emergent economic power
might sway the bureaucrats at BEIC, and he wrote them back, citing the
growth in population and in trade and the favorable location of the site. While
the British and Dutch entered into negotiations on this issue, Rafes contin-
ued to expand trade. Within a year his proft was over $4,000,000, and his
little port had grown to 10,000 inhabitants. Within fve years, while Dutch-
controlled Malacca made $2,500,000, the island port generated revenue of
$22,185,000. Even the British bureaucracy proved capable of recognizing a
windfall when one fell on them, and they gave Rafes permission to continue
with the establishment of Singapore.
41
Tis kind of scenario strongly suggests that our most meaningful interac-
tion with extraterrestrial intelligence will be through a perspicacious robot
probe equipped to seek out other intelligence and to conduct trade where
possible. Te existence of such an instrument would certainly imply a civili-
zation technologically in advance of ours. However, while such a civilization
could be greatly advanced compared to us, this is not a necessary postulation.
Several authorities believe that, within the next 75 years, we will possess the
capability to send such probes ourselves.
42
We need not make the Aztec error and presume that extraterrestrials who
contact us possess godlike powers or even represent an enlightened civili-
zation.
43
Tey may come from a civilization as politically, culturally, and
ethnically divided as our own. However, for purposes of initial interaction,
this diversity may not be salient, as we are liable to be contacted by a single
sociocultural entity.
Trade and Tremors
Te one precious commodity that has no mass yet can be traded between
all sentients is information. Tis is why we can anticipate the arrival, at
some point, of an intelligent probe, designed to collect information for later
41. N. J. Ryan, The Making of Modern Malaya: A History From Earliest Times to Independence
(Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1965).
42. K. Eric Drexler, Engines Of Creation (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986); B.
Haisch, A. Rueda, and H. E. Puthoff, Inertia as a Zero-Point Field Lorentz Force, Physical
Review A 49 (1994): 678694; Oliver W. Markely and Walter R. McCuan, eds., 21st Century
Earth: Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996).
43. Douglas Raybeck, Predator-Prey Models and Contact Considerations, paper presented at the
11th annual Contact conference, held 1820 March 1994 in Santa Clara, California.
154
Contact Considerations
transmission back to its point of origin. No doubt the probe will also be
equipped to evaluate the circumstances it confronts and to assess what sorts of
information can appropriatelyand safelybe exchanged. Exchange, trade,
will be the main motivation for contact. Of course, some information can be
obtained by observation, without any human agents. However, efciency in
gathering information and the ability to assess its importance and organize
it coherently would greatly beneft from our active participation.
Perceptions of the potential represented by such contact can be expected
to vary among nations and to raise a series of ethical and international legal
issues.
44
Each country will want to proft from exchanges, and a dominant
theme, given the sad state of the international scene, may well be weaponry.
However, if we can assume a modicum of rational self-interest on the part of
an intelligent probe, this is just the sort of information it would be unwilling
to release. Tis leaves a variety of issues ranging from health and longevity
to environmental control. Diferent nations will undoubtedly have varying
priorities in this regard. Tere may even be countries that wish to trade for
such esoteric elements as music and philosophy.
Te reactions of various nations to the trading possibilities will be criti-
cal in shaping the initial interactions with a nonterrestrial sentient. Nations
will likely difer in both perspective and manner as they approach the goal
of communicating with an extraterrestrial intelligence. All nations will make
assessments of the intentions of the probe and will evaluate whether it is apt
to be threatening or benign.
45
Fortunately, a promising means of assessing
intentions has recently been suggested.
46
Even though the possibility that the
sentients responsible for constructing the probe may well be aggressive, the
probe itself will probably not pose a threat. As mentioned earlier, Greg Bear
has posited malevolent extraterrestrials who send destructive probes about
the universe to locate intelligent life-forms and destroy them.
47
Short of this
scenario, however, such probes are apt to be complex collectors of informa-
tion. One of their functions may well be to identify sentients who could pose
a future threat to them.
44. Douglas A. Vakoch, Responsibility, Capability, and Active SETI: Policy, Law, Ethics, and
Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Acta Astronautica 68, nos. 34 (2011):
512519.
45. Raybeck, Predator-Prey Models and Contact Considerations.
46. Douglas A. Vakoch and Michael Matessa, An Algorithmic Approach to Communicating
Reciprocal Altruism in Interstellar Messages: Drawing Analogies between Social and
Astrophysical Phenomena, Acta Astronautica 68, nos. 34 (2011): 512519.
47. Bear, The Forge of God.
155
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Te responses of most major nations will likely feature a degree of military/
political paranoia. Although it seems improbable that the probe would express
bellicose intent, or be capable of signifcant hostile action (remember, we need
not anticipate enormously advanced technology to accept the probability of
contact), most governments will respond with a conservative posture, fearing
at least trickery and at most some form of cataclysm. Given the manner in
which our technologically superior nations have treated other members of
their own species, there could be grounds for real concern.
48
It would make sense to nominate the United Nations or some other agency
as the spokes-entity for the planet, but the UN has become an unwieldy
bureaucracy with both staunch supporters and vociferous opponents, and
there exists no other agency acceptable to all powers. Tat Earth may not
speak with one voice could put us in a difcult bargaining position, as coun-
tries will probably vie with each other for greater access to the probes store
of information. It is extremely plausible that the probe might be in a better
position to infuence trade terms than will the various nations of Earth.
Practical Ponderings
While the United States may have a technological advantage in complex
communication systems, this advantage may prove insignifcant should real
possibilities for trade arise. Indeed, given the ubiquity of the Web and the
access to information it provides, poor countries can assert their right to trade
as easily as rich ones. Probably, those nations who might better succeed in
such a trading situation will possess some cultural and social qualities that
the United States lacks. Teir internal politics may be more consistent and
their world view more accepting of diferences. Other countries may also
lack some of the United States handicaps. Te U.S., along with many other
Western nations, tends to make dichotomous judgments that can oversim-
plify complex situations.
As our brief review of the Iroquois Confederacy and Japan indicated, there
is considerable utility in coordinating a unifed response to the possibility
of trade. A centralized polity can foster such a response, assuming that, like
those of Japan and the Iroquois and unlike that of the United States, the
governance structure is not overly bureaucratic. Exempting a few idealistic
and intellectual oddballs, the principal concern of most people and most
nations will be proft.
48. Raybeck, Predator-Prey Models and Contact Considerations.
156
Contact Considerations
As it did among the Japanese and the Iroquois, a history of prior cultural
borrowing could encourage an open attitude toward trade. Nonetheless, as
Japan has abundantly demonstrated, this element does not hinder an ethno-
centric world view. What it does do is to make borrowing and adopting new
elements a pragmatic issue rather than an ideological one.
A level of balanced heterogeneity is desirable. By that I mean it would
be useful if a nation contains peoples of difering ethnicities and languages
who are neither particularly advantaged nor disadvantaged within the social
structure. Such a situation would probably further a genuine respect for difer-
ences, and this could be a useful perspective in dealing with an extraterrestrial
intelligence. I would like to report that our planet is replete with examples,
but such is not the case. Tis condition is not only rare; it is probably not
fully realized anywhere on Earth, and we have 4,000 cultures.
49
Finally, the strangest observation of all, in communications with an alien
probe, poor nations should enjoy an advantage over rich ones. My reasoning
here simply refects the propensities of those in control to wish to remain so
and, if possible, to augment their power.
50
Tus, wealthy nations such as ours
will have to contend with a variety of powerful special interests, each trying
to gain some advantage in the unfolding scenario and each desperately worried
that new information may undercut its market position. Who could be more
threatened by cheap energy than Standard Oil, Shell, the oil cartels, etc.? Who
would be more endangered by inexpensive transport than Detroit and other
auto and truck manufacturers? How will drug companies, insurance com-
panies, power suppliers, unions, and others respond to the challenges posed
by new information? Should they be unable to beneft directly from the new
information, they will endeavor at least to maintain the status quo. Since we
possess the best government money can buy, we in particular will fnd our
eforts at trade hindered by the divisive acts of entrenched corporate interests.
One fnal bit of advice in what is liable to be a future bargaining session:
dont forget the lesson taught us by the Mori and by the confdent manner
with which they greeted British colonizers. Despite probable disparities in
49. To some degree this condition was approached in Java a generation ago and among some
elements of Pakistani society earlier. For the case of Java, see Benedict R. OG. Anderson,
Mythology and the Tolerance of the Javanese (Ithaca, NY: Modern Indonesia Project, Cornell
University, 1965). On Pakistan, see Fredrik Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston: Little
Brown and Company, 1969).
50. Kevin Avruch et al., A Generic Theory of Conict Resolution: A Critique, Negotiation Journal
3 (1987): 3796; Michael Banton, Political Systems and the Distribution of Power (New York:
Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1965).
157
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
technology and knowledge between ourselves and the extraterrestrials who
send a probe to contact us, we should not view ourselves as helpless pawns.
Reciprocity is the most fundamental principle of human interaction.
51
It is
therefore one apt to be appreciated by any sentient.
52
If we encounter difcul-
ties in the bargaining process, they will more probably emanate from our own
diferences and our own politics than from the machinations of an intelligent
probe. Of course, if we place ourselves in weak bargaining positions, it seems
probable that another would take advantage of that. Wouldnt you?
51. Lawrence Becker, Reciprocity (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986); Karl Polanyi, Conrad
M. Arensberg, and Harry W. Pearson, eds., Trade and Market in the Early Empires (New York:
The Free Press, 1957); and W. V. Quine and J. S. Ullian, The Web of Belief, 2nd ed. (New York:
Random House, 1978).
52. Harrison, Thinking Intelligently About Extraterrestrial Intelligence ; Harrison, After Contact;
Vakoch and Matessa, An Algorithmic Approach to Communicating Reciprocal Altruism in
Interstellar Messages.
158
CHAPTER TEN
Culture and Communication
with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
John W. Traphagan
Recent research focusing on how humans might construct interstellar mes-
sages to communicate with an extraterrestrial intelligence has raised interest-
ing opportunities to think about the manner in which contact and culture
intersect. Douglas Vakoch, for example, asks the important question of
whether music, the seemingly universal language shared by humans, could
provide a means of communicating or whether it might be incomprehensible
to beings with diferent types of sense organs and who evolved diferent ways
of dealing with the exchange of information through sound.
1
It has also
been widely thought that mathematics would provide an excellent means of
communication. As Carl DeVito has observed, in order for extraterrestrial
intelligent beings to construct the equipment necessary for radio transmis-
sions, it would seem likely that they would need a thorough understanding
of mathematics.
2
Other researchers have suggested exploration of potential
cognitive universals, such as aesthetics or spiritual ideas as a basis for develop-
ing strategies in SETI research.
3
In each case, however, questions remain as
to whether the mathematics, aesthetics, or spirituality of an extraterrestrial
1. Douglas Vakoch, Celestial Music?, Space.com, 22 December 2000, available at http://
archive.seti.org/epo/news/features/celestial-music.php (accessed 12 June 2013); Douglas
Vakoch, Will ETs Math Be the Same as Ours?, Space.com, 11 January 2001, available at
http://archive.seti.org/epo/news/features/will-ets-math-be-the-same-as-ours.php (accessed
12 June 2013). See also Douglas A. Vakoch, An Iconic Approach to Communicating Musical
Concepts in Interstellar Messages, Acta Astronautica 67, nos. 1112 (2010): 14061409.
2. Carl L. DeVito, On the Universality of Human Mathematics, in Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, ed. Douglas A. Vakoch (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2011), pp. 439448, esp. p. 439.
3. Guillermo A. Lemarchand and Jon Lomberg, Communication Among Interstellar Intelligent
Species: A Search for Universal Cognitive Maps, in Vakoch, ed., Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, pp. 371295, esp. p. 371.
159
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
being will be mutually intelligible with our own, even if the underlying
principles are the same.
Marvin Minsky argues that certain basic capacities and characteristics will
be typical of any intelligent being: these include self-awareness; problem-
solving capacity; analytical skills; and the abilities to describe the world,
explain phenomena, accumulate and exchange information, allocate scarce
resources, and plan ahead.
4
While this argument makes a great deal of sense,
an important issue is missing that must be considered: all of these capacities
involve culture, and culture is highly variable even among humans, who are,
from a biological perspective, relatively uniform.
Philosopher Tomas Nagels discussion of the question What is it like to
be a bat? is illustrative when considering this issue. Nagel notes that, while
consciousness of experience occurs at many levels of animal life, experiencing
what it is to be another form of animal life is essentially impossible.
5
Bats,
of course, are designed to experience the world through echolocation, using
sonic feedback from their own screeches to discriminate among objects in the
world and thus to construct in their brains some type of model or understand-
ing of their environment. Echolocation mediates the manner by which bats
enact the capacities that they have, such as planning ahead to avoid ramming
into obstacles or identifying mosquitoes to eat. In other words, how they plan
and how they identify things are based on a model of the environment that
is, in turn, based on the interpretation of sonic echoes as the means by which
to spatially locate and identify objects (in contrast to humans, who primarily
interpret light refections to accomplish the same goals).
Nagel defnes the problem this way: because we lack the capacity to echo-
locate, we are fundamentally incapable of knowing how bats experience the
world we both inhabit. We can imagine what it is to be a bat, but we cannot
know what it is to be a bat or what a bats experience of the world is really
like, because we are incapable of processing and interpreting information in
the way that bats do. Te same can be said for other animals, such as dogs,
that are much closer to humans in terms of their sense organs. Hound dogs
have approximately 10 times the number of scent receptors that humans do
and have diferent visual and aural abilities. With these senses, how does a
4. Marvin Minsky, Communication with Alien Intelligence, in Extraterrestrials: Science and Alien
Intelligence, ed. Edward Regis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985). The full text of
this article is available at http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/AlienIntelligence.html
(accessed 12 June 2013).
5. Thomas Nagel, What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, The Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (1974):
435450.
160
Culture and Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
dog construct the world? Are his images or conceptualizations of the world
primarily based on interpretation of scent or sound (note the difculty we
have, being largely visual animals, in imagining the world without the notion
of an image coming into the picture) as opposed to the interpretation of
visual images?
Even among humans who share the same apparatus for sensing the world
(keep in mind that people who are blind or deaf, for example, do not share
the same apparatus), the things that people choose to focus on when con-
structing their world can vary considerably from one culture to another.
For example, when English speakers count, we focus only on the number
of a particular object: one sheet of paper, two sheets of paper, three sheets
of paper; one pencil, two pencils, three pencils. We also emphasize the dif-
ference between one object and multiple objects. For some reason that is
lost to the ages, it matters to English speakers that, when counting things,
one addresses only the issue of how many and that, when categorizing parts
of the world, one diferentiates between a single object of a particular kind
and many of those objects.
By contrast, Japanese speakers approach counting things in the world quite
diferently. First, the Japanese language does not need to distinguish between
one and more than one object. Tis is implied by the fact that numbering
of things does not involve plurals in most cases. Tere is one car, two car,
three car; or one tree, two tree, three tree; and so on. Second, the issue of how
many is not distinct from the issue of the structural form that the object one
is counting takes in the world. Tus, to count things like sheets of paper or
compact discs in Japanese, one counts ichi-mai, ni-mai, san-mai, meaning
one thin, fat thing; two thin, fat thing; three thin, fat thing. If one wants
to count things like pencils or pipes, one counts ippon, ni-hon, san-bon, indi-
cating one cylindrical thing, two cylindrical thing, three cylindrical thing.
Tere are counters for large machines, small machines, large animals, small
animals, and, to the irritation of native English speakers who want to learn
Japanese, many diferent forms found in the world.
Te point here is that even among two human languages, the approach to
something as simple as counting difers signifcantly, although by no means
beyond the point of mutual comprehension. We can translate counting in
Japanese to counting in English by rendering enpitsu ippon as one pencil
and kuruma ni-dai as two cars. While this is a perfectly clear and reason-
able translation for these objects and for the quantity of them, something
interesting happens in the processwe lose basic interpretive and classif-
catory information about how Japanese people perceive what is important
in counting things. Furthermore, we encounter this diference despite the
fact that Japanese and English speakers do all of the things that Minsky
161
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
identifes as being fundamental to intelligence. How would we translate
counting between humans and, say, a race of intelligent beings who process
sensory data through echolocation? Would countingand, more generally,
mathematicsnecessarily be constructed in the same way humans do this
by such beings? Given their manner of processing the world, perhaps they
would be quite interested in shape and size or sonic qualities when counting.
Would a bat-like intelligent species count one large sound-absorbent thing,
two large sound-absorbent thing, or one small sound-refective thing, two
small sound-refective thing?
While it seems entirely reasonable that the underlying principles of sym-
bolic systems such as mathematics or music would be understood by both
humans and an alien intelligence, the way in which a particular being acquires
and processes sensory data will infuence its construction of any system to
describe what is being processed. Furthermore, the elements of the world that
are deemed important in a particular culture, which are, in turn, shaped by
the sensory organs available to a particular species of beings, will also infuence
cognition and the manner in which individuals in that society classify and
construct their world around elements that matter more or less.
6
Whether it is counting, music, or mathematics, the question of how to
communicate is not simply one of the mediums through which ideas are
exchanged or the capacity to carry out certain functions necessary to under-
standing and manipulating an environment that is consistent in the universe
that both beings inhabit. Instead, it is one of recognizing an interpretive
context or framework for communication that will work when it is quite
possible that the mode of communication and interpretationof receiv-
ing and analyzing informationnatural to an extraterrestrial life-form will
difer signifcantly from our own. At the root of this issue is the question of
how culture factors into that process of interstellar communication and the
construction of interstellar messages.
What is Culture?
Te defnition of culture is usually assumed rather than explicated, not only in
the literature dealing with SETI but also in more general scholarly and non-
scholarly discussions of intercultural communication among human societies.
6. I am at this point ignoring the possibility of an alien intelligence in which individuality is not
important or wherealong the lines of Star Treks Borgthe civilization is organized as a
collectivity. This issue is best left to another paper.
162
Culture and Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
It is essential, however, that we, as cultural beings, rigorously consider what
we mean by culture when addressing the issue of how to communicate with
an unknown other. Te culture concept, as it is used in popular media and
many areas of scholarship, is largely used as a homogenizing category that
tends toward essentialist representations of both other societies and those of
the individuals who are writing.
7
Anthropologists have long recognized the complexity associated with
identifying the characteristics of any particular culture and have debated
not only the extent to which one can consider culture bounded but also the
meaning of culture as both an empirical and an analytical category. Tese
debates have often divided anthropologists about how the concept should
be used and what it actually represents in terms of human social organiza-
tion and behavior. As James L. Watson points out, early usage of the term in
anthropology centered upon the idea that culture is a shared set of beliefs,
customs, and ideas that are learned and that unify people into coherent and
identifable groups.
8
In this sense, then, culture represents a form of collec-
tive or social memory that links past, present, and future. Tis formulation
represents culture as fairly deterministic in shaping human behavior within
a particularand boundedsociety.
Contemporary anthropologists have created theoretical constructs that
posit culture as being much less static than the type of defnition given above
implies. People are not only unifed but may also be divided by their customs
and beliefs even when they ostensibly belong to the same culture. Rather than
the deterministic thing reifed in earlier concepts of culture developed by
anthropologists and still widely used in other felds of scholarship, culture
is better understood as a process by which people continually contest and
reinvent the customs, beliefs, and ideas that they use, collectively, individually,
and often strategically, to characterize both their own groups and those of
others.
9
In short, culture is in a constant state of fux. Furthermore, it involves
not only subjective interpretation of events and experiences but also indi-
vidual agency as people negotiate and manipulate their social environments.
7. Essentialism is often dened as the tendency to reduce a group of people to specic charac-
teristics, values, or features that all members of that group are assumed to exhibit.
8. James L. Watson, ed., Golden Arches East: McDonalds in East Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1997).
9. See Sherry Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); V. Prashad, Bruce Lee and the Anti-Imperialism of
Kung Fu: A Polycultural Adventure, Positions 11, no. 1 (2006): 5190.
163
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Tat said, it is important to recognize that culture is the primary lens
through which humans acquire sensory data and organize those data into
useful patterns and systems. Bruce Wexler, in a recent discussion of sensory
deprivation and brain development, notes that the relationship of an indi-
vidual to his or her environment is so extensive that making a hard and fast
distinction between the two is quite problematic.
10
Because humans now
inhabit an environment that is more artifcial than organic, modern children
develop their cognitive abilities in response to stimuli that are predominantly
cultural rather than natural Culture does not simply provide a set of ideas,
rules, or concepts that shape behavior; it provides an environment of behav-
iors that people observe and that, in children at least, infuences the physi-
ological development of the brain.
Te fact that culture is both fuid and highly individualized does not mean
that culture is either analytically unapproachable or impossible to under-
stand and characterize. Indeed, culture is so central to how humans and, I
would argue, any intelligent being functions that it is essential to attempt
a defnition, even if only a provisional one.
11
Culture, from my perspective,
is a complex of social and ideational felds of constructs that exist within indi-
vidual minds, that are negotiated and developed in reaction to personal experi-
ence mediated by particular sensory apparatuses, and through which individuals
organize and interpret sensory data as symbols and concepts that are, in turn,
used for further organization and interpretation. Tese felds are interconnected
regions of memory that are used to translate concrete experience into domains
of abstract and subjective reasoning and feeling. In short, culture involves
the individual process of triangulating memory, which is inherently per-
sonal and idiosyncratic, with experience, which can be either individuated
or collectivized.
For example, when an American sees a baseball game, he is likely to con-
jure up a variety of images or memories, both personal and shared, which
may contribute to the status of baseball within the consciousness of individual
Americans as culturally signifcant. One person might think of civil rights and
Jackie Robinson, or the come-from-behind victory of the Red Sox over the
10. Bruce E. Wexler, Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 2006), p. 39.
11. Humans are not the only animals on Earth who exhibit culture or cultural variation.
Chimpanzees make use of rudimentary tools and in some cases isolated groups use different
tools and techniques for activities such as gathering ants. See Wexler, Brain and Culture, p.
184; and Beghan J. Morgan and Ekwoge E. Abwe, Chimpanzees Use Stone Hammers in
Cameroon, Current Biology 16, no. 16 (2006): R632R633.
164
Culture and Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series. Another might
think about pleasant afternoons playing Little League ball, or displeasure
with a spouse who spends hours in front of the television watching major
league games. Te specifc memories that one associates with the sport are
idiosyncratic; a single woman wont have memories of a husband who spends
too much time watching baseball on TV, even if she is well aware that there
are husbands whose behavior is interpreted this way. A Red Sox fan may con-
sider the Dodgers/Angels interleague rivalry but could regard it as trivial in
comparison with memories of Ted Williams or hatred of the Yankees, which,
in turn, are based on remembered experiences of past encounters between
Williams and the Yankees. One need not have played or even watched baseball
to have memories related to the game and to understand its meanings within
American culture, but it is necessary to know baseball as an idea in order to
create linkages with other areas of ones life and to derive meaning from those
linkages. It is in the subjective and personal interpretation of experience and
the generation of personal abstractions or linkages between experience and
interpretation that we fnd culture.
Te idea that some memories or ideas are shared, such as a baseball game,
is based upon the assumption that most people have had some similar experi-
ence associated with the thing in question. But if one considers the example
of a sporting event carefully, it becomes clear that each person at the ballpark
or arena has a diferent experience. For example, each seat is oriented at a
unique angle to the feld, creating distinct visual and aural perspectives on the
action; the experience from an outfeld bleacher seat and the experience from
a box seat directly behind home plate are radically diferent. Furthermore,
a variety of other activities are going on during the game: people are having
conversations, passing around a beach ball, taking a nap, getting beer or pea-
nuts, chasing a nearby foul ball, or shouting obscenities at the umpires. To
put it briefy, at what appears to be the collective event of a baseball game, no
two members of the audience experience the game in precisely the same way.
Te same can be said for the players, each of whom perceives the game from
a diferent position on the feld or from the bullpen or bench.
12
Tis example should not be taken as an isolated oneeach particular
experience is embedded in a vast matrix of constructs that exists within each
persons own collection of experiences. Te formula F = ma that we learn in
high-school physics class is part of the collection of experiences shared by
12. For a related discussion of baseball and collectivization, see John W. Traphagan, Rethinking
Autonomy: A Critique of Principlism in Biomedical Ethics (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2012), p. 16.
165
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
most Americans and people in many other societies, although certainly not
shared by all humans. Study and learning are direct experiencings of the world
and are refected in this example as the reifed abstractions (such as force) that
have become part of the logic of modern science and specifcally physics. As
the knowledge of individual experience becomes shared knowledge among
certain groups of people, it is organized and constructed (re-collected) within
the framework of an assumed, collectivized logic, which in many cases may be
accepted as consisting of unequivocal maxims of human experience, or doxa,
as sociologist Pierre Bourdieu terms the natural and unquestioned in relation
to culture, even when that logic is not actually shared among all humans or
even by various groups within a particular society.
13
In short, the experience of the baseball game or the formula F = ma,
rather than being collective, is collectivized as the participants generate an
abstraction (construct) about a shared experience (watching a game, learn-
ing a formula, etc.). While the experience that I have with my son sitting
next to me at a Red Sox game may be reasonably similar to his, that of the
drunken fan two rows behind us may be quite diferent from ours; however,
we may still collectivize the experience as communal because we do share the
fact of having attended the game and, if we are both Red Sox fans, of having
pulled for our team. We also share some level of common understanding of
the game and how it is played; however, my sons knowledge of the game is
considerably deeper than mine because he is an accomplished playerhe
sees many things that I miss because he has a type of experience I lack. And
other fans may know little or nothing about the game or be knowledgeable
enough to keep score.
Te central point here is that culture is contained not in an ephemeral social
milieu but in the heads of the people who defne their own selves in terms
of a particular set of contextually shaped constructs (ideas, memories, and
behaviors). As a result, culture is idiosyncratic. Tere is neither an American
culture nor a Japanese culture nor an extraterrestrial culture. Instead, there are
multiple and varied constructions and interpretations of the social milieu in
which intelligent beings live. Many of these constructions and interpretations
are collectivized and are thus viewed as being shared by the members of any
arbitrarily defned social group. Te fact that these interpretations overlap to
some (variable) extent and generate predictable behaviors and selves that are
mutually identifed and consistent with observable behaviors leads people to
13. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997); Henry Margenau, The Nature of Physical Reality: A Philosophy of Modern Physics
(1950; rpt. Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow Press, 1977).
166
Culture and Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
think of culture as being out theretranscending the individual, existing
in its own right, and governed by its own laws.
14
Implications for SETI Research
Tere are several themes running through the above discussion that have
relevance for SETI and CETI research. First, culture is not distinct from
biologythe sensory apparatus that individuals use signifcantly shapes their
experience of the world and the manner in which they experience and con-
struct cultural ideas and patterns of behavior. Second, culture represents a
context for linking memory, experience, and predictability (past, present,
and future) into an interpretive framework that people use to deal with their
surroundings. Tird, culture is neither bounded nor constant; instead, it is
in a continual state of change or fux. Finally, culture is not consistent; it is
an amalgam of individual experiences, interpretations, and memories that are
treated as though they are consistent but that actually involve considerable
variation at the individual level.
When thinking about potential contact with an extraterrestrial intelli-
gence, one can draw several conclusions from this type of understanding of
14. In addition to avoiding assumptions about ones own culture as collective and out there in
the world, it is important to recognize that the culture concept can at times be used in ways
that freeze difference in a manner similar to concepts such as race and ethnicity. The culture
concept, when viewed in terms of collectivity rather than as a process that involves some
level of collectivization of ideas and behaviors, can become a way of reifying an other that is
inherently contrasted to the selfwhether it is the self of the Western anthropologist, of
Western society, or of another societyas people attempt to contrast, often strategically, their
own world with the worlds and ideas of other societies. Abu-Lughod argues against cultural
labels that homogenize the experience of women and, thus, obscure the worlds that women
create and within which they interact. This idea can be extended more broadly as a strategy
to avoid homogenizing categories, such as Korean culture (or American, Japanese, German,
etc.), that inherently obscure the variations existing within the heads of individual Koreans and
the complexities of their own interpretations of something or somethingsan abstraction
that is/are represented as Korean culture by both Korean and foreign observers of Korean
society. In one sense, there is no such thing as Korean culture; but there is a sense in which
many Korean people, under certain circumstances, tend to interpret their surroundings in
similar ways and construct their worlds on the basis of assumptions about what is natural and
normal behavior. See L. Abu-Lughod, Writing Against Culture, in Recapturing Anthropology:
Working in the Present, ed. R. Fox (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1991).
167
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
culture. First, when we ask such questions as Will ET be altruistic? or Will
ET be bent upon eradicating inferior beings from the galaxy? we are prob-
ably barking up the wrong tree. For example, Frank Drake argues that any
highly organized group of people will necessarily require altruism, because
the ability to put the needs of the social whole ahead of ones own needs is a
prerequisite to creating any organizational structure.
15
Tere are, of course,
some problems with this formulation; the most notable of which is the rec-
ognition that group and individual needs are not always necessarily at odds
and, thus, that individuals may align themselves with the needs of the group
only when those needs correspond with their individual interests.
16
I may
align my own interests with those of administrators in my university simply
because they write my paycheck, not because I necessarily agree in every case
with their decisions about university policies and practices. In other words,
being altruistic may simply be a form of selfsh behavior. Drake also makes
the important point that the defnition of what constitutes altruistic behavior
may vary considerably from one society to another. Ethnographic research
has shown repeatedly that there is no necessary mapping of one societys
conceptualizations of the good or the altruistic onto those of another society,
and it is not at all unusual for such concepts to be contradictory even within
a particular society.
17
My aim here is not to enter into a discussion of whether alien societies
will be altruistic. Rather, it is to point out that questions and debates about
the likely character of an alien civilization assume that aliens will be quite
uniform in their attitudes toward their own world and toward the encounter
with an intelligent other. Refection on our own case, and the above discus-
sion of culture and cognition, make it clear that if they are anything like us,
this will not necessarily be true. Indeed, much of the literature on contact
15. Frank Drake, Altruism in the Universe?, available at http://archive.seti.org/seti/projects/imc/
encoding/altruism.php (accessed 12 June 2013).
16. For a fascinating exploration of altruism from both biological and cultural perspectives, see
Barbara Oakley et al., eds., Pathological Altruism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
17. For excellent examples of this, see Anthony P. Glascock, When Is Killing Acceptable: The
Moral Dilemma Surrounding Assisted Suicide in America and Other Societies, in The Cultural
Context of Aging: Worldwide Perspectives, 2nd ed., ed. Jay Sokolovsky (New York: Bergin
and Garvey, 1997), pp. 5670; Anthony P. Glascock, By Any Other Name, It Is Still Killing: A
Comparison of the Treatment of the Elderly in America and Other Societies, in The Cultural
Context of Aging: Worldwide Perspectives, ed. Jay Sokolovsky (New York: Bergin and Garvey,
1990), pp. 4356; and John W. Traphagan, Taming Oblivion: Aging Bodies and the Fear of
Senility in Japan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000).
168
Culture and Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
with extraterrestrial intelligence tacitly assumes that an alien civilization will
be culturally unifed, unlike our own world. Te idea behind this hypothesis
seems to be that progress leads to greater levels of unifed organizational
structure, but this assumption derives from human, and particularly Western,
perspectives that refect a teleological notion of cultural evolution in which
there is a universal outcome to processes of cultural change. Advanced, in
this formulation, becomes inexorably associated with culturally and politi-
cally unifed.
18

In essence, this is a very anthropocentric approach that assumes an
underlying similarity in all intelligent beings, in the ways in which culture
is expressed, and in how culture shapes civilizations. However, if we do look
at our own world as an analogue of what we might fnd elsewhere, we must
face the fact that we could be dealing with a world fragmented into diferent
cultural frameworks, much as our own is, and consisting of beings who may
not respond to contact with us in a uniform way. Technological advance-
ment on Earth has not always been associated with increased political and
social integration (think World Wars I and II). Even if the experience of our
planet is dissimilar to that of another world, it seems reasonable to think
that we will be dealing with beings shaped by common memories (among
themselves) and who will share, but who will also debate and contest, ideas
developed within the frameworks of those common memories and experi-
ences about what to do with the fact of having contacted humans. Tis
problem is exacerbated when we take into account the strong likelihood
that alien beings may have sensory organs that are quite diferent from our
own and, thus, may process experience and translate that experience into
cultural frameworks in a way diferent from our own. And even if such expe-
riences and memories can be seen as common, they must be understood
in the manner identifed above as being highly particularistic and based on
individual experience, unless, of course, we encounter an alien society in
which individual beings are cognitively integrated in some way and, thus,
actually do share a single experience of the world. In that situation, the
18. One good example of this in the scholarly literature on SETI appears in Steven Dicks interest-
ing article The Postbiological Universe (Acta Astronautica 62, nos. 89 [2008]: 499504,
esp. p. 500), in which he works from the assumption that a central goal of cultural evolution
is increasing intelligence. The idea that cultures necessarily evolve, rather than change, is
based upon Western (cultural) notions about the nature of human social organization in which
certain social structures are more advanced than others and there is a directionality that
implies improvement to the ow of cultural change.
169
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
meaning of culture for such a being becomes extremely difcult for humans
to understand or even imagine.
19
One proposed solution to this problem depends on members of both
societies sharing the capacity for symbolic interaction. In order for the trans-
fer of information to occur, intelligent beings need to be able to make one
thing stand for another thing. If humans were incapable of making the color
red stand for the command to stop, we would have a very difcult time
transferring the information needed to make driving reasonably safe most
of the time. In this example, as in much of the symbolic activity of humans,
the linkage between thing and thing signifed is arbitrary: no physical cor-
relation exists between the color red and the action associated with Stop!
Vakoch argues that the use of icons, or signs that visually resemble the signi-
fed, may help to resolve the problem of the arbitrary linkage between sign
and symbol, even while there remains the fundamental problem that the
interpreter may still not understand the physical correlation between the icon
and the thing it signifes.
20
Indeed, if an extraterrestrial has diferent sensory
organs from humans, the idea of what constitutes iconic symbols may not
be useful. Would an image of Abraham Lincoln on a fve-dollar bill look
like the actual Abraham Lincoln to a creature that uses echolocation to sense
its surroundings?
Perhaps one way to deal with this problem is to recognize that the point
of contact will represent a context in which not only is the intended message
interpretable, but the methods of communicating and representing informa-
tion are also interpretable, perhaps more so than the intended meaning. I
would like to suggest that should we encounter evidence of extraterrestrial
intelligence in the form of a signal (directed at us or not), we should be
concerned with deciphering the meaning of the signal not only in terms
of its intended content but also in terms of what it tells us about the being
who sent it. A signal conveys both explicit and implicit information about
the sender. Te fact, for example, that humans have been sending television
images out into the galaxy for several decades could tell extraterrestrials much
about us, if they are able to recognize those signals as containing information
that can be represented in a visual medium. Te simple fact that we send out
electromagnetic signals that can be interpreted visually and aurally indicates
19. Although this is certainly a worthy endeavor, it is best reserved for another paper.
20. Douglas A. Vakoch, The View from a Distant Star: Challenges of Interstellar Message-
Making, posted online March/April 1999 and available at http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/
mercury/9902/vakoch.html (accessed 12 June 2013). This article originally appeared in
SETIQuest 4, nos. 12 (1998): 810 and 1517.
170
Culture and Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
a great deal about how we process the world: that we have sense organs which
translate sound and light into information we can use, as well as the types of
limitations (in terms of the light spectrum, for example) of human senses.
An alien intelligence that recognizes this fact would have a basis upon which
to create a message we might be able to understand.
Te messages sent out to date, such as Drakes broadcast pictures and
binary information, which were assumed to require no prior understanding
of our technology, are attempts to anticipate the capacities of another civi-
lization of intelligent beings. Drakes message, for example, provides some
basic information about us and our knowledge, including numbers from 1
to 10 plus images representing the human form, DNA structure, hydrogen
and carbon atoms, and information about our solar system. Drake himself
has noted that when he presented his prototype message to diferent scien-
tists, they had trouble interpreting all of the contentwith most being able
to understand only the sections immediately relevant to their own areas of
expertiseleaving us to wonder how well extraterrestrials would do if they
stumbled across the message.
21
Indeed, the difculty in interpreting the intended meaning of the message
suggests that another approach might well be taken. Instead of being con-
cerned primarily with the content of a message, we might want to consider
focusing on what the message tells us about who sent it. In Drakes message
there are several subtexts that convey information about us that are not part
of the intended meaning. For example, the manner in which the message is
constructed would suggest that we think in terms of binary relationshipswe
encode information in terms of 1s and 0sand understand two-dimensional
images. Extraterrestrials might assume that this is how our language works
or that this structure represents how humans organize thought in general,
an assumption that would be misleading at best. However, the fact that the
message represents information in a visual manner, like our television signals,
would imply correctly that we are visually oriented beings. If the message were
to be interpreted as having been sent by an alien civilization for the purpose
of making contact, then it would quite inaccurately indicate that we are a
unifed society or culture interested in communication with civilizations in
other parts of the universe.
Tese thoughts suggest that future research on interstellar message con-
struction should involve not only study of the explicit message intended but
21. Leslie Mullen, The Man to Contact, interview with Frank Drake, Astrobiology Magazine, 27
August 2007, available at http://astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&
le=article&sid=2441&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 (accessed 12 June 2013).
171
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
also direct consideration of the implicit information that is being conveyed
along with the explicit message. Rather than just asking What does ET mean
in a message? or What information do we want to convey in a message from
us to ET? we should also be asking What are the implicit indicators and
forms of information about ET and ourselves that are contained in any mes-
sage sent or received? Tese questions should lead to consideration of how
we might develop useful tools to interpret such implicit information, should
we encounter a signal, and also of how to encode that type of information
in any signal we might send. In many respects, knowing how to interpret
implicit information may prove more important than being able to interpret
the explicit message, given the cultural and biological diferences that might
exist between humans and extraterrestrial others as well as the inevitable dif-
ferences in personal intentions and interpretations on both sides that will be
fundamental parts of contact.
172
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Speaking for Earth
Projecting Cultural Values Across
Deep Space and Time
Albert A. Harrison
Ample evidence suggests that people seek to inform future generations about
their lives, times, and accomplishments. Earth is sprinkled liberally with time
capsules, monuments, tombstones, and other tributes to ego, achievement,
and in some cases folly. Of such commemoratives Carl Sagan wrote, For
those who have something they consider worthwhile, communication to the
future is an almost irresistible temptation.... In the best of cases it is an opti-
mistic and far-seeing act; it expresses great hope for the future; it time-binds
the human community; it gives us a perspective on the signifcance of our
own actions at this moment in the long historical journey of our species.
1

Converging factorsincluding recognition that we may not be alone in
the universe, realization that a major Near-Earth Object (NEO) impact or
other terrestrial or cosmic catastrophe could spell the end of humankind, and
emerging interstellar communication technologiesencourage us to reach
out to new, unseen audiences.
In this chapter I consider Active SETI, that is, attempts to make extrater-
restrial civilizations aware of our own. (Tis pursuit is also known as METI, or
messaging extraterrestrial intelligence.
2
) Although a simple continuous-wave
beacon might sufce, actual attempts have been more elaborate: encoding
information in grids, plaques showing Earths location in the Milky Way,
recordings of sights and sounds of Earth, eerie electronic music, representa-
tions of human DNA, and personal letters. In his defnitive history of time
1. Carl Sagan, Murmurs of Earth (New York: Random House, 1978), quoted here from Douglas
A. Vakoch, Across Generations: SETI Looks to the Future, Space.com, 10 April 2003, http://
archive.seti.org/seti/projects/imc/articles/xc_generations.php (accessed 29 April 2012).
2. Alexander Zaitsev, METI: Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence, in Searching for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Past, Present, and Future, ed. H. Paul Shuch (Berlin and
Heidelberg: Springer-Praxis, 2010), pp. 399428.
173
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
capsules, William E. Jarvis defnes space-time capsules as slices of culture,
frozen in time and sent beyond Earth.
3
Tese include spacecraft that bear
greetings from humankind and microwave transmissions that transcend phys-
ical containers and carry time capsulelike messages at the speed of light to
distant stars. As in the great time capsules of the 20th century, space-time
capsules are deliberate eforts to communicate with audiences that difer,
perhaps in radical ways, from the people who assembled the contents. As is
true for even the most ambitious terrestrial time capsules, we really do not
know if and when a space-time capsule will be retrieved. If the recipient is
many light-years away, discovery may occur long after our society has ground
to a halt. Whether they receive one of our space-time capsulesor we receive
one of theirsit could be a message from ancient history.
Developing Interstellar Messages
Toughtfully done, Active SETI requires more than developing power-
ful communications technology. Political, legal, and moral issues must be
addressed. Douglas Vakoch proposes that when we make the decision to
communicate (and frame our message to ET), we should look out for our
own security and welfare, tell the truth, and include information likely to
educate and beneft the receiving civilization.
4
Te International Academy of
Astronautics SETI Committee urges that any attempt to communicate with
extraterrestrial intelligence should be on behalf of all humankind. Te goal is
for Earth-dwellers to speak in a unifed voice for the planet as a whole without
favoring one group or set of interests over another. Consequently, the SETI
Committees desire has been to work through the UN, consult broadly, and
involve diverse groups of people from around the world.
5
Message development is a useful exercise because it may help us to under-
stand a transmission that we receive and because it could reduce the lag
time if we choose to frame a response. Early eforts included developing
formal languages based on logic and mathematics, such as Hans Freudenthals
3. William E. Jarvis, Time Capsules: A Cultural History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003).
4. Douglas A. Vakoch, Responsibility, Capability and Active SETI: Policy, Law, Ethics and
Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Acta Astronautica 68, nos. 34 (2011):
512519.
5. Michael A. G. Michaud, Ten Decisions That Could Shake The World, Space Policy 19, no. 2
(2003): 131136.
174
Speaking for Earth
LinguaCosmica, or Lincos.
6
Science provides the building blocks for a lan-
guage proposed by Carl DeVito and Richard Oehrle.
7
Formal languages could
lead eventually to discussions of topics such as philosophy, history, and poli-
tics, but for these topics Vakoch (who seeks to communicate culture in all of
its richness and diversity) proposes a more direct approach, based on icons.
8

His work includes three-dimensional pictures (grids give two-dimensional
cues of depth) that are presented sequentially to tell a storysomething like
a storyboard or fip art. Trough conveying the concept of pain, he hopes to
further explain what it means to be human.
9
Vakoch also seeks to communi-
cate maxims, or the principles that people live by.
10
Tese maxims have to
do with gratitude, forgiveness, and other principles shared by many world
religions. To promote interstellar cooperation, he has developed pictorial
narratives intended to express altruism and reciprocity.
11
An early Space Age attempt to communicate with life beyond Earth con-
sisted of afxing plaques to Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. Launched in the early
1970s, these NASA spacecraft have now completed their exploration of our
solar system and are proceeding on a million-year journey to other stars. Tey
were followed in the late 1970s by two Voyager spacecraft carrying plaques
and recordings of terrestrial sights and sounds, along with instructions and
playback equipment. Te Voyager disks include 100 images (carefully chosen
to refect diversity and minimize confusion on the part of observers unfamiliar
with our ways), greetings in 55 languages, and brief excerpts of music from
around the world. Arguably the richest portrayal of life on Earth thus far sent
into space, themes within the images and sequences of music help to tell the
6. Hans Freudenthal, Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse (Amsterdam: North-
Holland Publishing, 1960).
7. Carl L. DeVito and Richard T. Oehrle, A Language Based on the Fundamental Facts of
Science, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 43, no. 12 (1990): 561568.
8. Douglas A. Vakoch, An Iconic Approach to Communicating Musical Concepts in Interstellar
Messages, Acta Astronautica 67, nos. 1112 (2011): 14061409; and Douglas A. Vakoch,
Representing Culture in Interstellar Messages, Acta Astronautica 63, nos. 56 (2008):
657664.
9. Douglas A. Vakoch, What Does It Mean to Be Human? Reections on the Portrayal of Pain in
Interstellar Messages, Acta Astronautica 68, nos. 34 (2010): 445450.
10. Douglas A. Vakoch, A Taxonomic Approach to Communicating Maxims in Interstellar
Messages, Acta Astronautica 68, nos. 34 (2011): 500511.
11. Vakoch, A Taxonomic Approach to Communicating Maxims in Interstellar Messages, passim.
175
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
story of human evolution.
12
Commenting on the improbability that any of
these spacecraft would be discovered, SETI pioneer Barney Oliver said: Tere
is only an infnitesimal chance that the plaque will be seen by even a single
extraterrestrial, but it will certainly be seen by billions of terrestrials. Its real
function, therefore, is to appeal to and expand the human spirit and to make
contact with extraterrestrial intelligence a welcome expectation of mankind.
13
Maybe someday in the spirit of Voyager, an international group will pro-
duce a major compendium describing life, mind, and society on Earth. Partly
a historical document, partly an expression of contemporary culture and
values, this Encyclopedia Terrestria would convey the essence or feel of our
time. It could contain hundreds of thousands of images, sound bites, and
video clips, all woven into a rich and detailed overview of our past, present,
and projected future. In the course of preparing this multimedia compen-
dium, humanity would step back and look at the big picture. Deciding what
might be important to another civilization would force us to move beyond
our characteristically short time span and develop a long-term perspective.
Determining what we should say and how to say it could be a useful self-study
that fosters self-contemplation and encourages consensus. Tese deliberations
could clarify how we see our place in the universe, what makes us human, and
where we are going. In the meantime, Earth is already speaking with many
voices, refecting multiple values and interests.
Reaching Interstellar Audiences
Experience gained with terrestrial time capsules suggests certain rules of
thumb for announcing our presence in the universe. Earths message should
be conspicuous so that it will be easy to fnda powerful transmission that
cuts through the static the way a foghorn drowns out the chatter of seagulls,
a spacecraft that appears large and bright to the eye. Redundancy, or mul-
tiple copies, is another way to increase the chances of discovery. A transmis-
sion could be continuously repeated, perhaps from multiple sites. Messages
that are capable of renewing themselves would ofer particular advantages.
Gregory Benford gives oral traditions, passed from generation to generation
12. Douglas A Vakoch, Whats Past Is Prologue: Future Messages of Cosmic Evolution, in Shuch,
ed., Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, pp. 373398.
13. Barney Oliver, quoted here from Carl Sagan, Murmurs of Earth (New York: Random House,
1978), p. 11.
176
Speaking for Earth
by word of mouth, high marks for reliability and accuracy.
14
Te longevity
of many narratives derives from their adaptability to the needs of successive
generations. Te Bible, for example, is reviewed and revised periodically. Such
revisions have produced the King James version, which remains dominant
today, and a modern English version that was released in the 1950s. Unlike
terrestrial time capsules, space-time capsules cannot be opened periodically,
have their contents inspected, and then be repacked with updated materials.
However, early space-time capsules can be followed by later updates, much
as the great printed encyclopedias of the past were supplemented with annual
yearbooks between editions.
SETI (or at least its precursor) began as an active process in the mid- to
late 1800s. Florence Raulin-Cerceau has recently discussed plans developed
during that era to make ourselves known to possible neighbors within our
solar system.
15
At that time, scientists could still hypothesize that the Moon,
Mars, and Venus were inhabited. Despite the occasional fash of light or other
mysterious phenomenon, no unambiguous signals were sent our way, and
so it was up to us to take the lead. In the absence of spacecraft or radio, this
meant creating visual displays that were large enough to draw the attention
of their hypothetical recipients. By composing messages in such a way as to
illustrate our virtuosity in math or science, it was supposed, we would dem-
onstrate our intelligence. Trough the clever use of mirrors (and, later on,
powerful electric lights), we could communicate telegraphically. Tese plans
did not reach fruition because of the tremendous costs of constructing giant
mirrors, igniting miles of kerosene-topped trench systems, and planting huge
forests to grow in geometric patterns.
Raulin-Cerceau points out that certain ideas from that time have per-
sisted into the modern era. First and foremost is the notion that it is possible
to conduct an empirical test of the hypothesis that we are not alone in the
universe. Second, the assumption that since we all live in the same universe
governed by the same laws of nature, science provides a good starting point
for interstellar discussions. Finally, there is the assumption that just as we have
astronomers who study their planet, their astronomers will study our planet
and recognize that we are intelligent.
During the early part of the 20th century, Guglielmo Marconi and other
radio pioneers sought to intercept extraterrestrial transmissions but either
14. Gregory Benford, Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across the Millennia (New York:
Perennial, 1999).
15. Florence Raulin-Cerceau, The Pioneers of Interplanetary Communication: From Gauss to
Tesla, Acta Astronautica 67, nos. 1112 (2010): 13911398.
177
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
found nothing unusual or stumbled across something that was interesting
at the time but which could not be attributed to extraterrestrial intelligence.
Shortly after the 20th centurys midpoint, computations demonstrating the
feasibility of interstellar communication coupled with the frst radio-telescope
search further pushed the search from an active to the passive process. Te
early acronym for Communicating with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, CETI,
gave way to SETI, which did not imply transmissions from Earth. Te names
for searches during the years of NASA sponsorship (19691994) were the
Microwave Observing Project and later the High-Resolution Microwave
Survey. As John Billingham points out, during those years attention was
focused on increasing the sensitivity of antennas and receivers, increasing
the number of frequencies that could be monitored simultaneously, and
developing sufcient computer power to process the massive amounts of
data being collected.
16
Interstellar Transmissions
As methods for propagating human legacy, microwave radios and lasers ofer
low-cost, of-the-shelf technology and the ability to cover all but unimagi-
nable distances at the speed of light. Interception by extraterrestrials requires
that distant civilizations have advanced tobut not entirely beyondthese
technologies. Te frst deliberate interstellar microwave broadcast took place
at the dedication of the Arecibo radio telescope on 14 November 1974.
17

Te pixels of this digital message, arranged into 73 lines of 23 characters
each, form graphic representations of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, phospho-
rous atoms, and DNA; chemical formulae for sugars and nucleic acids; and
line drawings of both a human fgure and a radio-telescope dish antenna.
Te message was aimed in the direction of the Hercules star cluster Messier
13 (M13), tens of thousands of light-years away.
Alexander Zaitsev, a vigorous proponent and practitioner of Active SETI,
has reviewed at least 20 major transmissions launched between the late 1990s
and 2008.
18
One of these powerful transmissions was sent from Zaitsevs
16. John Billingham, SETI: The NASA Years, in Shuch, ed., Searching for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, pp. 6586; and chapter 1 of this volume.
17. Frank Drake and Dava Sobel, Is Anyone Out There? The Scientic Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence (New York: Delacorte Press, 1992), pp. 180185.
18. Alexander Zaitsev, METI: Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence, in Shuch, ed., Searching
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, pp. 399428.
178
Speaking for Earth
Evpatoria Planetary Radar (EPR) in Ukraine in May 1999. Yvan Dutil and
Stephane Dumas of the Defence Research Establishment Valcartier (DREV)
in Quebec, Canada, designed the message.
19
Intended to be an Interstellar
Rosetta Stone, it built on previous attempts, including Lincos, to develop
an interstellar language and depended heavily on science and mathematics.
Packed full of scientifc notation, the message was put together like a text-
book, starting with very simple ideas, such as the hydrogen atom, and then
moving on to increasingly difcult topics. Tis transmission was beamed to
four carefully selected stars, well within the transmitters range of 100 light-
years. Recipients are encouraged to respond.
In August and September 2001, Zaitsev transmitted a Concert for ET
from Evpatoria to six nearby Sun-like stars; the music included Gershwins
Summertime, the fnale of Beethovens Ninth Symphony, and the melody
of the Russian folksong Kalinka-Malinka performed on a solo instrument
known as a theremin.
20
By waving his or her hands over two sensors that
control the theremins volume and tone, the performer produces swoopy,
tremulous sounds ranging from a deep staccato buzz to a high-pitched whine.
Zaitsev considered the instrument a good technical choice because it provides
a sharp and clear signal that stands out against background noise and should
carry with reasonable fdelity across interstellar distances.
21
Since the theremin is regarded diferently in Russia and the United
States, I wonder what ET might make of it. Te instruments Russian inven-
tor, Leon Teremin, saw it as one more solo instrumentcomparable to a
violin or cello.
22
In the early years of the 20th century his invention, which
debuted at an electrical workers convention, delighted Lenin and drew
large audiences. It was considered an instrument of culture and refnement.
Highly regarded performers played classical music to upscale audiences
and received rave reviews from critics who shared Lenins and then Stalins
enthusiasm. Apart from providing the focal point for a few experimental,
avant-garde concerts in the 1930s, the theremin never made it big with U.S.
music lovers. But in the 1940s the instrument made it to Hollywood, where
19. Alexander Zaitsev, Charles M. Chafer, and Richard Braastad, Making a Case for METI, SETI
League Guest Editorial, March 2005, http://www.setileague.org/editor/meti/htm.
20. Zaitsev, Chafer, and Braastad, Making a Case for METI.
21. Alexander L. Zaitsev, Design and Implementation of the 1st Theremin Concert for Aliens,
Sixth International Space Arts Workshop, Paris, 17 March 2002, p. 3.
22. James Wierzbicki, Weird Vibrations: How the Theremin Gave Musical Voice to Hollywoods
Extraterrestrial Others: Electronic Music from 1950s Science Fiction Films, Journal of
Popular Film and Television 30, no. 4 (2002): 125135.
179
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
it replaced conventional ensembles in certain movie genressuspense and
horror. By the 1950s the theremin had become tied, irrevocably, to classic
science-fction flms such as Te Day the Earth Stood Still. How ET might
react to this kind of music is anyones guess, but these East-West diferences
remind us that technical considerations alone are unlikely to determine
reactions to interstellar messages.
Zaitsev, Charles M. Chafer, and Richard Braastad teamed up to send
scientifc and personal messages to fve Sun-like stars in Cosmic Call II
in 2003.
23
Chafer was the president of Team Encounter, which sought to
reach out to our galactic neighbors through microwave transmissions and
automated spacecraft. Whereas an earlier broadcast included the names of
and brief messages from people who were directly involved in the project, this
transmission included photos, drawings, and audio and video fles submitted
by Team Encounter members worldwide. Customers signed up, mostly
on the Internet, and paid a fee to support a peoples space program, which
Chafer saw as the wave of the future. Te materials were digitized and then
transmitted at full power to stars between 32.8 and 45.9 light-years away
from Earth. Tis broadcast began with the phrase Greetings from Earth,
a segment presented by noted news broadcaster, journalist, and television
personality Hugh Downs.
Each of the fve transmissions (aimed at one star) included the Interstellar
Rosetta Stone, a brief description of the spacecraft that Team Encounter had
under development, a copy of the Arecibo message, and a Bilingual Image
Glossary (BIG). Other contents included 282 fags of the world, pictures
of Ukrainian school children, music and images of KFT (a Hungarian rock
band), the song Starman by musician David Bowie, and, as a gesture of
peace and friendship, the text of a resolution passed by the New Mexico
state legislature in 2003 designating the second Tuesday in February as
Extraterrestrial Culture Day in New Mexico.
Team Encounter has also ofered the opportunity to send personal mes-
sages on extrasolar missions based on solar-sail technology. Tey hoped that
millions of people will pay to carry messagessheets of paper containing
text or pictures and strands of hair carrying DNAto the aliens. Author
and inventor Arthur C. Clarke signed up for the project and contributed
a sample of his DNA. Concluding his interview with Team Encounter
leader Chafer, Graham Phillips reported, According to this marketing
23. Richard Braastad and Alexander Zaitsev, Synthesis and Transmission of Cosmic Call 2003
Interstellar Radio Message, 2003, http://www.cplire.ru/html/ra&sr/irm/CosmicCall-2003/
(accessed 10 October 2004).
180
Speaking for Earth
man, projects like this are the real beginnings of the Space Agewhen
the public can become involved. Deadmen in orbit and Arthur C Clarkes
hair space odyssey. Teyre not crazy ideasthey are the frst steps to our
cosmic destiny.
24
In 2005 the Deep Space Communications Network transmitted more
than 130,000 electronic messages and enticed customers with the ofer of
5-minute voice transmissions for $99. Messages were not to be profane,
ofensive, or lewd (by human standards). TalktoAliens.com posted a 900 (toll)
telephone number where, for $3.99 a minute, clients could record a message
to be beamed to the stars.
25
In 2008 A Message from Earth set forth on a 20-year voyage from
Evpatoria to Gliese 581c, a large extrasolar planet believed to have Earth-like
characteristics.
26
Project organizers hoped to capture young peoples imagi-
nations and prompt them to think about humanity, our home planet, and
our place in the universe. Tis efort was a partnership of Bebo, a social
networking Web site, and RDF Digital, a subsidiary of a media group that
sponsors such popular UK reality-television shows as Shipwrecked, Location
Location Location, and Wifeswap. Te public submitted text, drawings, and
photographs for posting on a Web site. Ten viewers voted, and on the
basis of popularity, the 500 best were broadcast in a 4-hour transmission
in October of that year. Tis space-time capsule contained descriptions of
peoples lives and ambitions, images of famous landmarks and notable fgures,
and thoughts about world peace. One actress submitted pictures of opposing
political candidates (one to epitomize good and the other evil), and a male
rock singer obsessed on a songstresss bodily perfection. Te media company
was said to be contemplating a television series based on this project and
tentatively entitled A Message from Earth.
Tat same year the UK public competed to come up with the best idea for
a 30-second commercial for the snack food Doritos, to be beamed from the
EISCAT Space Center in Svalbard, Norway, to the habitable zone around one
of the stars in the Ursa Major constellation. Concerned about the frst impres-
sion we might make, Jason Palmer asked, Couldnt we advertise something
24. Graham Phillips, Space Encounter, ABC Catalyst, 11 October 2001, http://www.abc.net.au/
catalyst/stories/s386244.htm (accessed 29 June 2013).
25. Alan Boyle, Would You Pay to Send Messages Into Space?, Cosmic Log, 18 March 2005,
http://www.msnbc.com/id/7180932 (accessed 30 January 2006).
26. A Message From Earth (2008), Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/woko/A_Message_From-
Earth (accessed 19 July 2009).
181
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
more representative of our cultures, our hopes and dreams and interplanetary
worthiness? Like Spam? Corn dogs?
27
In 2010, to publicize the debut of Paul Daviess Te Eerie Silence: Are We
Alone in the Universe?,
28
the books publisher, Penguin UK, solicited 5,000
personal messages (each limited to 40 words) to transmit in the direction of
Orion. Te top 50 messages, as determined by a panel of judges, received
copies of Daviess new book. Among the winning comments were these:
Did you think YOU were alone in the universe? We dont bite, do you?
Please send pictures of your celebrities, and a binary number that translates
as You are not alone.
29
Approximately 1,000 messages were received and all
were transmitted.
After this type of commercialization, could religious spokespersons be
far behind? Methodist missionary Tom Hofman, who served in Russia, has
expressed keen interest in SETI.
30
A mission is a ministry commissioned by a
church or some other organization for the purpose of propagating its faith or
carrying on humanitarian work. Teology and discipleship are central themes.
Missionary work encourages church members to rethink their theology (for
example, to accommodate newly found cultures) and inspires people at home
as well as at the site of the mission. Compared to earlier missionaries who
helped European explorers claim new territories, todays missionaries are heavily
invested in humanitarian eforts and tend to soft-pedal dogma and prophecy.
Exomissionaries would focus instead on the histories, theologies, and futures
of Christian missions as they relate to issues of space exploration and SETI.
Exomissionaries could help scientists by speaking with an independent voice
in cross-cultural exchanges and working as cultural brokers who incorporate
perspectives from behavioral science and social work. It may be difcult for
exomissionaries to win favor from scientists (many of whom are agnostic or
atheist), but training missionaries in felds such as space medicine or linguistics
would increase their practical value to a space crew or SETI team.
27. Jason Palmer, Are We Sending the Right Message to ET?, New Scientist Space Blog, 2008,
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/space/2008/is-nowhere-safe-from_advertising (accessed 19
July 2009).
28. Paul Davies, The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe? (London: Penguin, 2010).
29. Graham Southorn, The Eerie Silence Winning Messages, Sky at Night Magazine, http://
www.skyatnightmagazine.com/forum/the-eerie-silence-winning-messages-t110073.html
(accessed 21 May 2010).
30. Thomas Hoffman, A Brief Handbook of Protestant Exomissiology, MS Thesis, Department of
Futures Studies, University of HoustonClear Lake (2004);

Thomas Hoffman, Exomissiology:
The Launching of Exotheology, Dialog: A Journal of Theology 43, no. 4 (2004): 324336.
182
Speaking for Earth
Satellites
Perhaps a bit closer to the SETI Committees ideal of speaking for Earth as a
whole was the KEO satellitea project planned but not completed, due to
the death of its originator. Tis was an international venture conceptualized
by the late artist Jean-Marc Philippe, led by Europeans, and strongly sup-
ported by non-Western countries such as India.
31
Tis orbiting space-time
capsule was intended for future generations on Earth but under doomsday
scenarios could survive the species that launched it. (Perhaps we should think
of it as a tomb for history.) KEO was planned with enough storage capacity
to allow every man, woman, and child on Earth to contribute up to a four-
page essay, and organizers solicited widely for messages. People could record
voice messages or send letters as well as enter their thoughts on the KEO Web
site. Contributions could be in any language, were uncensored, and would be
available to the public after KEO launched. Te millions of messages were to
be encoded on special tough glass CDs that would not deteriorate over time,
and the satellite would include a users manual, complete with information
on how to build a CD player. In addition to the Fresco of Messages, KEO
was to include the Library of Alexandria, a description of life in our time,
an astronomical clock, portraits of human beings as they appear today, and
samples of air, water, soil, and human blood encased in diamond.
KEO was designed to be bright and conspicuous, serving as a shining
reminder of the 21st century and easy to spot when falling back to Earth
50,000 years after its launch. If humanity fails to survive an asteroid impact
or other major calamity, and extraterrestrial explorers in our solar system
spot a satellite like KEO, then it may be such a satellite that perpetuates the
human legacy.
How Dangerous?
As Michael Michaud points out, there is always the possibility that our broad-
casts or probes will attract the attention of a civilization that chooses to exploit
Earth or eliminate us as a possible threat.
32
Michaud is among the many
31. Jean-Marc Philippe, The KEO Satellite, paper presented at the 1999 meeting of the
International Astronautical Federation, Amsterdam, IAF-99-P.3.10, October 1999.
32. Michael A. G. Michaud, Ten Decisions That Could Shake The World, Space Policy 19,
no. 2 (2003): 131136; Michael A. G. Michaud, Contact with Alien Civilizations (New York:
Copernicus Books, 2007), pp. 368374.
183
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
microwave SETI supporters who prefer passive SETIsimply listening and
watching. If we detect an extraterrestrial civilization, he hopes that we will
fght the temptation to respond immediately and will instead perform as
much reconnaissance as possible before taking a potentially fatal next step.
For such reasons, Michaud has described the decision to actively broadcast
as one of the great decisions that could shake the world. Radio astronomer
Dan Werthimer points out that we are, in the cosmic scheme of things, a
relatively primitive civilization, having had radio for only about a century.
33

He recommends that we keep listening for the next few hundred years, see
what we learn, and only then consider broadcasting. Scientist and science-
fction author David Brin also urges caution, noting widespread aggression
and violence on Earth.
34
Elsewhere, building on data from political science, I
have argued that long-lived societies are democratic, peaceful, and enduring,
and that self-serving, authoritarian, and aggressive societies inevitably collapse
due to internal faws and external opposition.
35
Convergent evidence strongly
suggests that societies that endure over appreciable periods of time are likely
to be peaceful and benign. But even if an optimistic analysis is correct, it is
probabilistic; and we cannot be assured that frst contact will be with a group
that wants to make friends.
Proponents such as Alexander Zaitsev portray Active SETI as continuous
with science.
36
Just as a biologist might try to stimulate a response from an
organism, Active SETI tries to stimulate a response from an extraterrestrial
civilization. SETI, proponents note, operates on the assumption that other
civilizations are not afraid to reveal themselves. Why should not we, too, be
willing to do this? If everyone is only listening, how could anyone fnd anyone
else? If a distant civilization is willing to provide us with scientifc insights and
information useful for solving our practical problems, then there is a certain
risk in not attracting their attention. Apart from the fate of our space-time
capsules, we might get caught anyway, since Earths radio signature expands
outward in all directions at the rate of one light-year per year. Very high power
33. Adrian Hon, Interview: SETI with Professor Dan Werthimer, Astrobiology: The Living Universe,
12 December 2001, available at http://library.thinkquest.org/C003763/pdf/interview03.pdf
(accessed 3 September 2013).
34. David Brin, A Contrarian Perspective on Altruism, in Shuch, ed., Searching for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, pp. 429450.
35. Albert A. Harrison, The Relative Stability of Belligerent and Peaceful Societies: Implications for
SETI, Acta Astronautica 46, nos. 1012 (2000): 707712; Albert A Harrison, The ETI Myth:
Idolatrous Fantasy or Plausible Inference?, Theology and Science 8, no. 1 (2010): 5167.
36. Zaitsev et al., Making a Case for METI.
184
Speaking for Earth
broadcasts began around World War II, so we may be identifable out to
approximately 60 light-years. Powerful military radar signals should be easily
detected at great distances, as should the radar pulses used to study distant
planets. Hypothetically, we could have been detected beyond the boundary
of our radio signature if alien astrobiologists have found means to identify
life-bearing planets such as ours.
Certainly nobody worries too much about, say, someone fashing a laser
pointer at a distant star. Nor does Frank Drakes three-minute transmission
from Arecibo raise many hackles. To detect this brief broadcast, listeners in
the vicinity of M13 will have to be lucky indeed. But suppose the transmis-
sion continued for decades. Concerns arise in the case of transmissions that
are both powerful and sustained. Despite some agreement within the SETI
community that international consultation should occur before communicat-
ing with ET, controlling broadcasters is all but impossible. SETI is (correctly)
presented to the public as a harmless activity. Arguing in favor of international
consultation before a message is dispatched from Earth implies that there is
something to worry about.
In actuality there is no real way to control eforts to speak for humankind.
As more and more people gain access to powerful computing and broadcast-
ing equipment, there are few if any practical ways to keep free-lancers of the
air. Any government, scientist, theologian, entrepreneur, or hobbyist who
has access to a powerful radio transmitter, laser, or spacecraft could send
an irretrievable message into the void. In the fnal analysis, many people
may speak for Earth. Michaud cautions: Having Humankind speak with
many voices may be representative of diversity, but it also may be bad policy.
Imagine yourself in the place of an ETI that receives a barrage of messages
from the Earth. How could you conduct a rational dialogue, and whom will
you believe?
37
Donald Tarter discusses what might occur if ET were bombarded with
many conficting messages.
38
He envisions a scenario in which we receive a
microwave broadcast from another civilization. Even in the case of a dial
tone devoid of superimposed information, we would be able to identify the
direction and distance of the alien transmitter. SETI post-detection protocols
require composing a response from all humankind, but preparing one would
take a long time. In the interim, many diferent parties would take it upon
themselves to beam messages to ET, creating exactly the kind of situation
37. Michaud, Ten Decisions That Could Shake The World, p. 131.
38. Donald E. Tarter, Reply Policy and Signal Type: Assumptions Drawn from Minimal Source
Information, Acta Astronautica 42, nos. 1012 (1998): 685689.
185
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
that Michaud hopes to avoid. To circumvent this, Tarter recommends a pre-
emptive strike. As soon as we detect ET, we send a powerful response. Tis
response should consist of an acknowledgment that we have received the
transmission plus a secret code. ET is instructed to ignore all future messages
from Earth except those that include the secret code. Tarter presumes that
the good guys will send the frst reply and that its recipients will accept
it because it is prompt and transmitted at high power. We will then hope
that ET ignores the subsequent welter of incoming messages while Earths
designated spokespersons prepare a more detailed response on behalf of our
entire planet. Later, this response will be sent along with the secret code that
proves the messages legitimacy. Tarter adds that a failure to reply (especially
if the message was deliberately beamed to Earth) could be interpreted as an
interstellar insult.
Decades and even centuries could pass between our transmission and their
response. Te fastest possible reply would take twice the time that it took for
the message to reach its destination: it would take a minimum of 100 years
to receive a reply to a message sent to a star 50 light-years away. Tis would
be a blink of the eye in comparison to the hundreds or thousands of years
of turnaround time for some of our messages that are wending their way
across the galaxy. In the absence of a central registry, nobody on Earth could
remember the date and contents of the original transmission. Te reply from
ET could be analogous to having a large unwanted pizza, ordered by some
previous tenant, arrive at your residence. Furthermore, their response could
be poorly timed, for instance, hitting the news when the world is teetering
on the brink of war. In this case people might fear that an extraterrestrial
civilization would align with one side or the other.
Tere are ways to send space-time capsules with minimal risks to our
safety. Orbiting satellites such as KEO or markers placed on the Moon or
Mars are relatively low risk. Te reason is that any extraterrestrials capa-
ble of interstellar travel who might arrive there will already have plenty of
other evidence of human existence. If we took steps to ensure that deliberate
microwave broadcasts were no more powerful than earlier transmissions, they
would extend no further beyond our current radio signature and hence could
not attract audiences that otherwise would not have discovered us. Also, we
might learn from movie villains who elude capture by using post-ofce boxes
rather than residence addresses, or who pay intermediaries to resend their
letters from an out-of-town location. A patient and security-minded civili-
zation could locate their transmitters a few light-years away from their local
sun. Communications between the home planet and the remote transmitter
are focused as much as possible (thereby making them difcult for others to
186
Speaking for Earth
detect), while the remote transmitter blasts the skies in other directions as a
diversionary tactic.
Kathryn Denning observes that the debate over Active SETI is difcult
if not impossible to resolve because participants approach it from diferent
perspectives.
39
Te scientist hopes to test a scientifc hypothesis; the political
scientist is concerned about the ramifcations of entering into a relationship
with an unknown adversary; the artist strives to celebrate life in the universe;
and other people want to make money or have fun. Denning urges us to
see interstellar transmissions not as unregulated scientifc experiments, or
unauthorized diplomatic initiatives, or public relations stunts, but instead as
something bigger and deeper which encompasses all of those: a technologi-
cally mediated manifestation of our drive to represent ourselves and connect
with the unseen.
40
Te question becomes: What is the right way to balance
the desires of some people against the concerns of others, and who is entitled
to make decisions about the future of the world that we all share?
41
She
suggests that we look at how such multifaceted issues have been addressed
successfully in the past.
Donald Tarter suspects that as long as SETI remains little more than an
exercise, the government can aford to treat the activity with benign neglect.
42
As soon as detection occurs, however, no government is likely to be willing to
leave matters in the hands of the scientifc community. When ET becomes
real, governments will seek to control outgoing messages or to sponsor its
own messages, intended to win converts, promote commerce, forge alliances,
and prevent wars.
Conclusion
Planned eforts to communicate with extraterrestrial audiences should force
us to step back, look at the big picture, and formulate an approach that is in
the interests of humankind. KEOs leading exponent, Jean-Marc Philippe,
certainly believed this, noting that his project gives us the opportunity to
share each individuals hopes, dreams, fears, doubts, and deepest convictions
39. Kathryn Denning, Unpacking the Great Transmission Debate, Acta Astronautica 67, nos.
1112 (2010): 13991405.
40. Denning, Unpacking the Great Transmission Debate, p. 1342.
41. Denning, Unpacking the Great Transmission Debate, p. 1344.
42. Donald E. Tarter, Security Considerations in Signal Detection, Acta Astronautica 46, nos.
1012 (2000): 725728.
187
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
and, in doing so, to discover our common humanity.
43
Right now, microwave
broadcasts intended for other worlds are racing through the galaxy, while
probes such as Pioneer and Voyager are lumbering along further and further
behind. Some broadcasters use low-power (500 watt) transmitters, while
some attempts to communicate are more reminiscent of science fction than
science. Over time, however, we can expect our technology and techniques
to improve. More people will gain access to radio telescopes and powerful
lasers, and, as the costs of spacefight decrease, an increasing number of orga-
nizations will even launch spacecraft. Slowly, these broadcasts will make the
transition from the symbolic to the functional, and, as the number of space-
time capsules increases, so will the chances that one or more of these will be
found. Perhaps the great radio silence that envelops our part of the galaxy
will someday be replaced by a great cacophony, with Earth itself responsible
for most of the noise.
43. Philippe, The KEO Satellite.
188
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Evolution of
Extraterrestrials
The Evolutionary Synthesis and Estimates of
the Prevalence of Intelligence Beyond Earth
Douglas A. Vakoch
Introduction
Te notion of extraterrestrial beings as bizarre yet somewhat humanoid life-forms
existed well before science-fction movies became popular. In Christiaan Huygenss
Te Celestial Worlds Discoverd, Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants
and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets, we can see two poles of thought about
life beyond Earth that are refected in more recent works. Tat monograph,
published posthumously in 1698, depicts possible denizens of other planets as
very similar to humans in some respects yet radically distinct from us in others.
After explaining why Planetarians would be upright beings with hands, feet,
and eyes, Huygens claims that their form could still be quite alien:
Nor does it follow from hence that they must be of the same shape
with us. For there is such an infnite possible variety of Figures to
be imagined, that both the Oeconomy of the whole Bodies, and
every part of them, may be quite distinct and diferent from ours.
1
Huygens was neither the frst nor the last astronomer to speculate on
extraterrestrial morphology. But his position is representative of his profes-
sion. For many astronomers, the progressive development of life has been
seen as an ineluctable occurrence given proper environmental conditions on
a planet. And even though Huygens and his scientifc heirs did not expect
1. Christiaan Huygens, The Celestial Worlds Discoverd: Or, Conjectures Concerning the
Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets (London: Frank Cass and Co.,
1968), p. 74 (facsimile reproduction of 1698 edition).
189
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
such beings to be identical to humans, they did predict signifcant paral-
lels between terrestrial and extraterrestrial life-forms. A striking contrast
is seen in the writings of nonphysical scientists. Members of this latter
group hold more widely difering views. But within this diversity, reasons
for their variation become more apparent when we understand how views
about extraterrestrials can be related to the diferential emphasis placed on
modern evolutionary theory by scientists of various disciplines.
Understanding the disparities among the biologists, paleontologists, and
anthropologists who have speculated on extraterrestrials becomes easier when
we pay attention to who was doing the speculating. Given the relatively small
number of commentators on the topic, it seems more than coincidental
that four of the major contributors to the modern evolutionary synthesis
of the 1930s and 1940s are among them. Te exobiological arguments of
Teodosius Dobzhansky and George Gaylord Simpson and, less directly, of
H. J. Muller and Ernst Mayr are all related to their earlier work on synthetic
evolution. By examining the variety of views held by nonphysical scientists,
we can see substantial disagreements between them about evolution as late as
the 1960s. By the close of the next decade, however, many but by no means all
believed that higher life, particularly intelligent life, probably occurs quite
infrequently in the universe. Teir reasons for these various beliefs suggest
a cause for the shift: an increasing acceptance of the evolutionary synthesis.
Early Critiques of Darwins Theory of Evolution
To understand the modern evolutionary synthesis, it is useful to recall the
main features of Darwins theory as expressed in the frst edition of Te
Origin of Species, published in 1859. His basic position can be summarized
in two concepts: variation and natural selection. Darwin limited himself to
minute diferences between organisms that could be passed on to subsequent
generations. Each organism would be uniquely equipped for the struggle
for existence, and those best suited to their environments would have the
greatest chance of surviving to reproduce ofspring that shared some of their
characteristics. Darwin succinctly stated the relationship between this process
of natural selection and variation: Tis preservation of favorable variations
and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.
2
2. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation
of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, with an introduction by J. W. Burrow (1859;
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 131.
190
The Evolution of Extraterrestrials
In subsequent years, the efcacy of natural selection was challenged and
refuted by many. Fleeming Jenkin, for example, contended that any small,
benefcial variations would be diluted quickly in a population that included
many other organisms not similarly adapted.
3
In later editions of Te Origin,
Darwin relied more heavily on sports, individual ofspring varying mark-
edly from their forebears. Tis caused some critics to charge that Darwin
had shifted to a position very similar to an earlier view that periodically new
species abruptly appear.
Ironically, the mathematical analysis of heredity that was to central to
formulating the modern evolutionary synthesis began as an argument against
the transmission of small variations from one generation to the next. When
Francis Galton examined the swamping efect that Jenkin described, he
concluded that any variations from the mean type of a species would be lost
in following generations. Tus, in the long run organisms would tend to have
common characteristics. Deviations from the norm were, by Galtons analy-
sis, transient. His protg, Karl Pearson, came to the opposite conclusion.
Pearson argued against the assumption that the fate of variations should be
measured against a fxed ancestral type. Rather, he said that variations from
an organisms ancestors could result in lasting changes in future generations.
In contrast to Pearson, others argued that evolution could be accounted
for only through large-scale mutations. Supporting their views with Gregor
Mendels newly discovered paper, William Bateson, Hugo de Vries, and
Wilhelm Johannsen proposed salutatory accounts of evolution. Mendels early
work focused on the inheritance of discontinuous characteristics. For example,
for some of his experiments he used pea plants that had either pure yellow or
pure green peas. When these plants were crossed, he did not obtain peas of
an intermediate hue but only of the same pure yellow of one of the parents.
Tis emphasis on inheritance of discrete characteristics supported the views of
those who explained evolution in terms of gross mutations. Moreover, many
were skeptical of the existence of natural selection. For example, as late as
1915, Johannsen saw no reason to assume that natural selection played a role
in evolution: Selection of difering individuals creates nothing new; a shift of
the biological type in the direction of selection has never been substantiated.
4
3. Fleeming Jenkin, Review of The Origin of Species, The North British Review 46 (June 1867): 277
318, reprinted in David L. Hull, Darwin and His Critics: The Receptions of Darwins Theory of Evolution
by the Scientic Community (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 303344.
4. W. L. Johannsen, Experimentelle Grundlagen der Deszendenslehre. Variabilitt, Vererbung,
Kreuzung, Mutation, in Carl Chun and Wilhelm Johannsen, Allgemeine Biologie, Part III of Kultur
Der Gegenwort, gen. ed. Paul Hinneberg (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1915), vol. 1, ch. 4, p.609;
191
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
The Evolutionary Synthesis
Te second and third decades of the century saw a return to the theory of
gradualistic evolution. Te inadequacies of Darwins original formulation
were overcome by reconceptualizing variation and natural selection. From the
combination of experimental and theoretical approaches to understanding
these processes, the evolutionary synthesis was born.
A major emphasis of the evolutionary synthesis was to explain natural
selection in mathematical terms. Especially in the work of R. A. Fisher, J. B.
S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright, inheritance at the level of populations was
explained through statistical models. Despite the highly theoretical nature
of their contributions, their work was not divorced from experimentation.
Fishers work in quantifying variation and natural selection typifed this syn-
thesis of mathematics and empirical research. Using Mullers experiments, he
showed how variation by micromutation could be estimated. Te result was
an indication of the rate at which variations entered populations. Next, he
was able to specify the degree of selection by environmental factors. Either
by comparing the diferential rate of increase of two or more populations or
by measuring changes of gene frequency within single populations, he was
able to propose a statistical model of natural selection.
For all of Fishers interest in natural populations, he was still a mathema-
tician with little training in biology. At the other end of the mathematical/
experimental continuum was H. J. Muller. By exposing genes to mutation-
inducing x rays, Muller was able to show the infuence of environment on
variation. But before the various strands of the evolutionary synthesis could
be braided together, populations had to be understood both statistically and
as they occur in nature. Dobzhansky, Simpson, and Mayr were particularly
adept at this task.
When we consider Dobzhanskys background, it is easy to see why he
made such an important contribution to the evolutionary synthesis. His
early training with Sergei Chetverikov emphasized population genetics. In
1927 he traveled to the United States to work with Mullers mentor, T. H.
Morgan. By combining Morgans stress on experimentation with the Russian
statistical approach, Dobzhansky broke new ground in the genetics of free-
living populations. Tis is evident even in his early research on variations of
quoted here from Ernst Mayr, Prologue: Some Thoughts on the History of the Evolutionary
Synthesis, in The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unication of Biology, ed. Ernst
Mayr and William B. Provine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 18, esp. p. 7.
192
The Evolution of Extraterrestrials
Drosophila in isolated mountain ranges.
5
More infuential, however, was his
Genetics and the Origin of Species, published in 1937.
6
Among those stimulated by this book was George Gaylord Simpson. As a
paleontologist, his contacts with colleagues within his profession contributed
little to his training in evolutionary theory. Paleontologists in the 1930s were
more concerned with descriptive systematics than with the foundations of
evolution. Consequently, Simpson relied on studies by people outside his
discipline, including works by Fisher, Haldane, Wright, and Dobzhansky.
7

After the 1930s, he also had personal contacts with Dobzhansky and Mayr.
8

Te high degree to which he assimilated populational approaches is evident
in his Tempo and Mode in Evolution, published in 1944. His conclusions
were in marked contrast to those of the Mendelians, whose position had
been dominant a few years earlier. Simpson acknowledged the importance
of variation but rejected macromutations:
Single mutations with large, fully discrete, localized phenotypic
efects are most easily studied; but paleontological and other
evidence suggests that these are relatively unimportant at any
level of evolution.
9
His view of natural selection was diametrically opposed to that of Johannsen.
According to Simpson, Selection is a truly creative force and not solely nega-
tive in action. It is one of the crucial determinants of evolution.
10
A third major fgure in the history of the modern evolutionary synthesis
began by studying neither bones nor fruit fies but birds. Unlike most other
ornithologists of his day, however, Ernst Mayr worked in population genetics.
Tough Fisher, Haldane, and Wright had little infuence on his early work,
he was quickly attracted to the Russian school because of its emphasis on
5. R. C. Lewontin, John A. Moore, William B. Provine, and Bruce Wallace, eds., Dobzhanskys
Genetics of Natural Populations IXLIII (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).
6. Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origin of Species, 3rd ed. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1951).
7. George Gaylord Simpson, Concession to the Improbable: An Unconventional Autobiography
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 114115.
8. Ernst Mayr, George Gaylord Simpson, in Mayr and Provine, eds., The Evolutionary Synthesis,
pp. 452463, esp. p. 455.
9. George Gaylord Simpson, Tempo and Mode in Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press,
1944), p. 94.
10. Simpson, Tempo and Mode in Evolution, p. 96.
193
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
naturally occurring populations and taxonomy.
11
Mayrs central concern was
speciation, which he thought could be discussed without recourse to large-
scale mutations: Speciation is explained by the geneticist on the assumption
that through the gradual accumulation of mutational steps a threshold is
fnally crossed which signifes the evolution of a new species.
12
Similarly,
natural selection played a key role for Mayr: Even genes with a small selective
advantage will eventually spread over entire populations.
13
The Evolutionary Synthesis and Extraterrestrial Life
Simpson on the Nonprevalence of Humanoids
Now that we have seen how Darwins notions of variation and selection were
reformulated in the 1930s and 1940s by synthetic evolutionists, we are prepared
to see the extent to which these ideas infuenced later speculations on the pos-
sibility of extraterrestrial life. An appropriate starting point is Simpsons 1964
article Te Nonprevalence of Humanoids. In addition to drawing on evolu-
tionary factors already mentioned above, Simpson discussed other consider-
ations afecting the probability of life beyond Earth. He agreed with those who
held that rudimentary macromolecules probably form from chemical processes,
which should occur throughout the universe. But, Simpson said, this view did
not commit him to the conclusion reached by many others, particularly physical
scientists: that therefore more complex forms of life will also evolve.
To transition from chemical to biological activity, Simpson said three processes
were required: mutation, recombination, and selection.
14
(While two of these
three are familiar from earlier discussions, recombination did not play as signif-
cant a role in the evolutionary synthesis.) Te critical question for Simpson was
whether or not these three factors interact in such a way as to make advanced
11. Ernst Mayr, How I Became a Darwinian, in Mayr and Provine, eds., The Evolutionary
Synthesis, pp. 413423, esp. pp. 421422.
12. Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species: From the Viewpoint of a Zoologist (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1942), p. 67.
13. Mayr, Systematics, p. 293.
14. George Gaylord Simpson, The Nonprevalence of Humanoids, Science 143, no. 3608 (1964):
769775, esp. p. 772; reprinted in George Gaylord Simpson, This View of Life (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1964), pp. 253271. For a related article see George Gaylord
Simpson, Some Cosmic Aspects of Organic Evolution, in Evolution und Hominisation, ed.
Gottfried Kurth (Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer, 1962), pp. 620; also reprinted in Simpson, This
View of Life, pp. 237252.
194
The Evolution of Extraterrestrials
forms of life a likely outcome of pre-biotic molecules. He argued that there are
two ways to approach this issue: through the actual history of life on Earth and
from theoretical considerations. In either case Simpson was not optimistic that
the development of extraterrestrial life would be a common occurrence.
According to Simpson, paleontological evidence gave no indication of the
inevitability of higher forms of life: Te fossil record shows very clearly that
there is no central line leading steadily, in a goal-directed way, from a protozoan
to man.
15
Variations are introduced through mutation, and individual difer-
ences are increased even more through recombination. Trough interactions
between the organisms and their environments, however, only a fraction of
these variations will become established in the population. Given the combi-
nation of the numerous factors responsible for the evolution of any particular
species, Simpson argued that terrestrial life is almost certainly unique:
Te existing species would surely have been diferent if the start
had been diferent and if any stage of the histories of organisms
and their environments had been diferent. . . . Man cannot be
an exception to this rule. If the causal chain had been diferent,
Homo sapiens would not exist.
16
Dobzhansky Against the Convergent Evolution of Extraterrestrial Life
Tough the thrust and conclusion of Dobzhanskys argument paralleled
Simpsons line of reasoning, Dobzhansky discussed explicitly two issues that
Simpson dealt with only in passing: chance and convergence in evolution.
Dobzhansky isolated the same three factors of mutation, sexual recombina-
tion, and natural selection as central to evolution. But only the frst two,
he said, operate randomly; selection works against chance. While acknowl-
edging that selection is probabilistic, he maintained that because it relates
the individual and its environment through a feedback mechanism, it is an
antichance process.
Dobzhanskys speculations about extraterrestrial life were consistent with
the emphasis on mutation and selection in the early days of the evolutionary
synthesis. While recognizing recombination as a factor in terrestrial evolu-
tion, when he committed himself to determining the characteristics that all
life should possess, Dobzhansky mentioned only selection and mutation:
15. Simpson, Nonprevalence, p. 773.
16. Simpson, Nonprevalence, p. 773.
195
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Despite all the uncertainties inevitable in dealing with a topic so
speculative as extraterrestrial life, two inferences can be made.
First, the genetic materials will be subject to mutation. Accurate
self-copying is the prime function of any genetic materials, but it
is hardly conceivable that no copy erors [sic] will ever be made.
If such errors do occur, the second inference can be drawn: the
variants that arise will set the stage for natural selection. Tis
much must be a common denominator of terrestrial and extra-
terrestrial life.
17
Dobzhansky also addressed the issue of convergent versus divergent evolu-
tion. He pointed out that in many instances, organisms of disparate ancestries
can have similar characteristics. As an example, he noted that fsh and whales
have similar forms because they both adapted to an aqueous environment.
Some have held that because this sort of convergent evolution is so common
on Earth, the process may be universal; therefore, the argument goes, extra-
terrestrials may well resemble life-forms on Earth. Dobzhansky rejects this
belief on the grounds that similar environments have frequently resulted in
not convergent but divergent evolution.
18
Dobzhansky concluded that, given the number of discrete interactions
between organism and environment in the evolutionary history of the human
species, the probability of humans evolving on another Earth-like planet is
virtually zero. Even assuming the existence of another planet equipped with
all of the life-forms that occurred in the Eocene period, the re-evolution of
humankind would require the same mutations and the same selection on the
roughly 50,000 genes that would have changed in Homo sapiens since then.
19
Muller, Mutation, and Intelligence
When H. J. Muller addressed the question of life beyond Earth, it is not
surprising that he emphasized mutation. What may seem more remarkable is
that someone who played such an important role in the evolutionary synthesis
still allowed for interplanetary convergence of intelligence. He agreed with
Simpson and Dobzhansky about the importance of chance:
17. Theodosius Dobzhansky, Darwinian Evolution and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life,
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 15, no. 2 (1972): 157175, esp. p. 170. For an earlier
formulation of Dobzhanskys view, see Sol Tax, ed., Evolution after Darwin, vol. 1 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1960).
18. Dobzhansky, Darwinian Evolution, pp. 168169.
19. Dobzhansky, Darwinian Evolution, p. 173.
196
The Evolution of Extraterrestrials
Just what steps will be taken at a particular point is sometimes a
matter of accident: of what mutation manages to take hold, and
then what combination of mutations, until some novel structure
o[r] manner of functioning is thereby brought into being that
acts as a key to open up an important new way of living.
20
Tough Muller believed a wide range of morphologies was possible, he
regarded intelligence as the natural product of evolution.
21
Tis conviction
may refect the infuence of one of his students, Carl Sagan.
22
Tough Sagan
worked with him for only one summer, Sagan said Muller always kept in
touch with him.
23
By the time Muller wrote the above article, the young
Sagan had also published about life beyond Earth.
Mayr and the Importance of Chance
Tough Mayr claimed his analysis was very similar to Simpsons, there were
signifcant diferences. Most obvious is Mayrs lesser emphasis on mechanisms
of evolution. Instead, he provided an extended summary of the history of the
human species. Tis choice may simply be a refection of the time in which
Mayr was writing. Dobzhansky, Simpson, and Muller all wrote frst about
extraterrestrials in the early 1960s. Mayrs article was written two decades
later. By then the evolutionary synthesis may have been so widely accepted
that a detailed justifcation of its basic tenets would have seemed superfu-
ous. Nevertheless, throughout the piece, his discussion was guided by a belief
in the importance of chance. Tough his primary concern was to assess the
likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence, not merely multicellular life, he
reached the same conclusions as Simpson.
Mayr amplifed Dobzhanskys argument against the convergent evolution
of intelligence by addressing the multiple emergence of vision on Earth. Many
scholars have argued that evidence for the widespread occurrences of conver-
gent evolution can be seen in the independent evolution of eyes in numerous
species. Mayrs own studies led him to conclude that eyes have developed at
20. H. J. Muller, Life Forms To Be Expected Elsewhere than on Earth, Spaceight 5, no. 3 (1963):
7485, esp. p. 80; reprinted from The American Biology Teacher 23, no. 6 (1961): 331346.
21. Muller, Life Forms To Be Expected Elsewhere than on Earth, p. 83.
22. Elof Axel Carlson, Genes, Radiation, and Society: The Life and Work of H. J. Muller (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1981), p. 389.
23. Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr., The Search for Life on Mars: Evolution of an Idea (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1980), pp. 4243.
197
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
least 40 diferent times in unrelated lineages. By contrast, intelligence has
evolved only once on Earth.
24
Divergent Views of Extraterrestrial Life:
Outside and Within the Evolutionary Synthesis
Speculations prior to the 1970s by those not intimately involved with the
evolutionary synthesis were less homogeneous than the views we have seen
thus far. For example, in 1953 the anthropologist Loren Eiseley focused on
the uniqueness of humankind. After examining mimicry among terrestrial
organisms, he concluded that mimicry could not be used to argue for extra-
terrestrials resembling life on Earth: No animal is likely to be forced by the
process of evolution to imitate, even superfcially, a creature upon which it
has never set eyes and with which it is in no form of competition.
25
Even more fascinating is Eiseleys description of the opinion of cytologist
Cyril D. Darlington. In Eiseleys words, Darlington dwells enthusiastically
on the advantages of two legs, a brain in ones head and the position of
surveying the world from the splendid height of six feet.
26
Why would a
contributor to the evolutionary synthesis hold a view so diferent from those
of the other four key fgures we have discussed? First, because Darlington was
writing several years before the others, the evolutionary synthesis may not
yet have solidifed. Second, he favored Henry Fairfeld Osborns orthogenesis
and Renschs directed evolution, which held that evolution is teleological.
27
Another anthropologist, William Howells, concluded in 1961 that extra-
terrestrial intelligence probably exists. He repeatedly contradicted mainstream
views of the evolutionary synthesis, even suggesting on several occasions that
evolution is a volitional process. For example, Howells said, Intelligent crea-
tures will have made a choice, early in evolution, of a nervous system which
is more open to fresh impressions: a brain which can learn.
28
He thought
such choices would likely lead to intelligence very human in appearance.
24. Ernst Mayr, The Probability of Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life, in Extraterrestrials: Science and Alien
Intelligence, ed. Edward Regis Jr. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 2330. For a
summary of Mayrs debate with Carl Sagan about the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence, see
Stephen J. Garber, A Political History of NASAs SETI Program, chapter 2 in this volume.
25. Loren C. Eiseley, Is Man Alone in Space?, Scientic American 189, no. 7 (1953): 8086, esp.
p. 84.
26. Eiseley, Is Man Alone in Space?, p. 81.
27. C. D. Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), p. 22.
28. William Howells, The Evolution of Humans on Other Planets, Discovery 22 (June 1961):
237241, esp. p. 239.
198
The Evolution of Extraterrestrials
Oceanographer and ecologist Robert Bieris conclusions were similar to
those of Howells, but the basis for Bieris belief was more explicit. Bieri
opened his 1964 article Humanoids on Other Planets? with a quotation
from geneticist G. W. Beadle, against whom he proceeded to argue. In oppo-
sition to Beadles assertion that there are an extraordinary number of evolu-
tionary pathways open to life, Bieri stressed the limitations imposed by the
properties of chemical elements and by the available forms of energy.
29

Such constraints, Bieri wrote, are evident in the fnite range of variability of
terrestrial organisms. Because of these restrictions, organisms beyond Earth
will conform to the same patterns imposed on life as we know it. After
considering a number of characteristics that he thought would be universal,
Bieri concluded with this prediction: If we ever succeed in communicating
with conceptualizing beings in outer space, they wont be spheres, pyramids,
cubes, or pancakes. In all probability they will look an awful lot like us.
30
Bacteriologist Francis Jackson and co-author astronomer Patrick Moore
seemed less certain. At one point in their 1962 book, they declared it absurd
to imagine that humans are constructed on an ideal model that would be
followed on other planets.
31
Yet a few pages later, they stated: It is by no
means impossible that, on planets closely similar to the Earth, chemical and
biological evolution might have followed a strikingly similar course, even
occasionally to the production of men.
32
Tere is no absolute contradiction
between these two views. However, it is noteworthy that Jackson and Moore
were open to both possibilities.
As we examine later works, we see a variety of perspectives. Dale Russell, a
paleontologist, was reluctant to generalize from evolution on Earth to extrater-
restrial conditions. In only one sentence did he suggest that the existence of
extraterrestrial life is by no means a foregone conclusion. Within the context of
astrophysical considerations, he concluded, It would seem that the origin of
life is intrinsically a much more probable event than the origin of higher intel-
ligence, a view recently echoed by paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer
29. Robert Bieri, Humanoids on Other Planets?, American Scientist 52, no. 4 (1964): 425458,
esp. pp. 452 and 457; see also G. W. Beadle, The Place of Genetics in Modern Biology,
Eleventh Annual Arthur Dehon Little Memorial Lecture (Cambridge: The Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, 1959).
30. Bieri, Humanoids on Other Planets?, p. 457.
31. Francis Jackson and Patrick Moore, Life in the Universe (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1962), p. 115.
32. Jackson and Moore, Life in the Universe, p. 124.
199
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Donald Brownlee in their Rare Earth.
33
Another paleontologist, C. Owen
Lovejoy, was more defnitive than Russell. Lovejoy believed that extraterrestrial
intelligence could be quite common, but he distinguished this from cognition,
which he reckoned would be much rarer beyond Earth. Because cognition
as exemplifed in humans is the result of our specifc evolutionary path, said
Lovejoy, the combination of events making cognition possible is highly unlikely
to occur on most planets where intelligent life is present.
34
In spite of the increasing trend to view the possibility of extraterrestrials
in light of synthetic evolutionary theory, concerns remained about some of
its founders principles. Gerald Feinberg and Robert Shapiro, a physicist and
a biochemist, rejected the assertion by space scientists Roger MacGowan and
Frederick Ordway that the majority of intelligent extrasolar land animals
will be of the two legged and two armed variety.
35
Instead they pointed out,
citing Simpson, that great divergences from terrestrial forms are possible
through the joint action of mutation and natural selection. Yet they also
maintained that we will undoubtedly encounter [convergent evolution] on
other worlds.
36
Paleontologist David Raup certainly understood the force
of arguments against convergence toward humanoid forms elsewhere, but
he countered that too little is known about the process of convergence to
make any defnitive claims. Te evolution of other humanoids may be highly
improbable, he wrote, but not necessarily impossible.
37
Evolutionary paleobiologist Simon Conway Morris is certainly conversant
with the evolutionary synthesis, but he emphasizes the ubiquity of conver-
gence, contesting the view that historical contingencies makes it impossible
to predict the likely forms of life on other worlds:
Rerun the tape of the history of life, as S. J. Gould would have us
believe, and the end result will be an utterly diferent biosphere.
33. Dale A. Russell, Speculations on the Evolution of Intelligence in Multicellular Organisms, in
Life in the Universe, ed. John Billingham (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1981), pp. 259275,
esp. p. 270; Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in
the Universe (New York: Springer, 2000).
34. C. Owen Lovejoy, Evolution of Man and Its Implications for General Principles of the Evolution
of Intelligent Life, in Billingham, ed., Life in the Universe, pp. 317329, esp. p. 327.
35. Roger A. MacGowan and Frederick I. Ordway III, Intelligence in the Universe (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall, 1966), p. 240.
36. Gerald Feinberg and Robert Shapiro, Life Beyond Earth: The Intelligent Earthlings Guide to Life
in the Universe (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1980), p. 411.
37. David M. Raup, ETI without Intelligence, in Regis, ed., Extraterrestrials, pp. 3142, esp. p. 36.
200
The Evolution of Extraterrestrials
Most notably there will be nothing remotely like a human, so
reinforcing the notion that any other biosphere, across the galaxy
and beyond, must be as diferent as any other: perhaps things
slithering across crepuscular mudfats, but certainly never the
prospect of music, no sounds of laughter. Yet, what we know of
evolution suggests the exact reverse: convergence is ubiquitous
and the constraints of life make the emergence of the various
biological properties very probable, if not inevitable. Arguments
that the equivalent of Homo sapiens cannot appear on some distant
planet miss the point: what is at issue is not the precise pathway
by which we evolved, but the various and successive likelihoods
of the evolutionary steps that culminated in our humanness.
38
Among those supporting Conway Morriss emphasis on convergence are
anthropologists Kathryn Coe, Craig T. Palmer, and Christina Pomianek,
who note, It is now time to take the implications of evolutionary theory a
little more seriously, and convergence is the norm.
39
Tey also maintain that
evolutionary theory, theoretically, should apply anywhere to anything that
is living, in a line of reasoning similar to that adopted by biologist Richard
Dawkins in his argument for Universal Darwinism.
40
Two other tendencies have also emerged among nonphysical scientists:
hardheaded theorizing and more free-form speculation. In a manner some-
what reminiscent of the earlier evolutionary systematists, James Valentine
approached the question by distinguishing between microevolution, involv-
ing selection within a population, and macroevolution, dealing with evolu-
tion above the species level. He concluded that the microevolutionary details
of life on another planete.g., their genetic materialswould probably be
very diferent from those of their terrestrial counterparts. But macroevolution,
38. Simon Conway Morris, Lifes Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 283284.
39. Kathryn Coe, Craig T. Palmer, and Christina Pomianek, ET Phone Darwin: What Can an
Evolutionary Understanding of Animal Communication and Art Contribute to Our Understanding
of Methods for Interstellar Communication?, in Civilizations Beyond Earth: Extraterrestrial Life
and Society, ed. Douglas A. Vakoch and Albert A. Harrison (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011),
pp. 214225, esp. p. 219.
40. Coe, Palmer, and Pomianek, ET Phone Darwin, p. 215; Richard Dawkins, Universal
Darwinism, in Evolution from Microbes to Men, ed. D. S. Bendall (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), pp. 403425.
201
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
he thought, should yield extraterrestrial patterns of multicellular diversifca-
tion similar to the patterns seen on Earth.
41
Imagination reigned in Bonnie Dalzells 1974 exhibit of possible alien
creatures for the Smithsonian, which drew upon her artistic talent as well as
her background in paleontology.
42
By hypothesizing planets that vary from
Earth in gravity and temperature, she imagined environments that would
foster a wide variety of land-bound, aquatic, and aerial life. Anthropologist
Doris Jonas and psychiatrist David Jonas, by contrast, considered not only
the morphology but also the possible perceptual worlds of extraterrestrials.
Tough their work was not as informed by theory as that of some of the
contributors to the evolutionary synthesis, their basic tenet was the same:
One thing is for certain: we have no reason to assume that evo-
lutionary forces on other planets will produce forms or intel-
ligences that are the same as ours even though the basic raw
materials must be similar. Whatever chance factors combine
to produce any form of life, infnitely more must combine to
produce an advanced form.
43
Conclusion
Some of the most incisive arguments for and against the possibility of extra-
terrestrial life have come from scientists who have only a passing interest in
the question. Teir views typically were more infuenced by their professional
work in their own disciplines than by more extended contacts with others
interested in life beyond Earth. Tus, when trying to evaluate their positions,
it is vital to understand the conceptual frameworks within which their specu-
lations arose. One theoretical framework that played a major role in the 20th
and 21st centuries is modern evolutionary theory. By examining the extent
to which this paradigm has impacted various felds over the past few decades,
we can better understand the diversity of views about extraterrestrial life held
by scientists from a variety of disciplines.
41. James W. Valentine, Emergence and Radiation of Multicellular Organisms, in Billingham, ed.,
Life in the Universe, pp. 229257, esp. p. 253.
42. Bonnie Dalzell, Exotic Bestiary for Vicarious Space Voyagers, Smithsonian Magazine 5
(October 1974): 8491.
43. Doris Jonas and David Jonas, Other Senses, Other Worlds (New York: Stein and Day, 1976), p. 9.
202
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Biocultural Prerequisites
for the Development of
Interstellar Communication
Garry Chick
In 1961, astronomer Frank Drake developed a formula for estimating the
number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy via the quantifcation
of what he felt to be seven relevant factors. Te Drake Equation contains
two terms, f
i
and f
c
, that refer, respectively, to the fraction of planets that
harbor intelligent life and the fraction of those with intelligent life capable
of developing a technology that would allow communication with other
worlds. Tese terms are two of the most difcult in the equation for which to
estimate values, and, not surprisingly, a wide range of values has been ofered
for each. Estimates of these values depend on a number of conjectures and
assumptions about the nature of intelligence; aspects of embodiment, such as
sensory modalities and faculties to manipulate the environment; and aspects
of culture that seem to be crucial for the development of advanced technol-
ogy. Te only data we have on the technological development necessary for
interstellar communication come from our own experience here on Earth.
While numerous Earthly species use technologies, only the technologies cre-
ated by humans qualify as complex. Similarly, many species show various
forms of intelligence and even some nonhuman species are also said to have
culture, depending on how that word is defned. My purpose is to examine
how intelligence, embodiment, culture, and their interactions, based on what
we know of their Earthly manifestations, might afect the values of Drakes
two most contested terms.
The Drake Equation
In an attempt to quantify the number of civilizations capable of interstellar
communication in the Milky Way galaxy, Frank Drake proposed the follow-
ing equation:
N = R* f
p
n
e
f
l
f
i
f
c
L,
203
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
where
N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy capable of interstellar
communication
R* is the rate of star formation per year in the galaxy
f
p
is the fraction of stars with planets
n
e
is average number of habitable planets per star with planets
f
l
is the fraction of habitable planets that develop life
f
i
is the fraction of planets with life that develop intelligent life
f
c
is the fraction of intelligent civilizations able (and willing) to
communicate
and L is the expected lifetime of such civilizations.
Tere are several excellent online calculators for the Drake Equation, but
the one provided by the NOVA Origins series is especially attractive and
user-friendly.
1
Tese calculators permit interested parties to plug in their own
estimates for the parameter values described above, but they simultaneously
raise troubling questions: Are the parameter values in the Drake Equation
any more than just guesses? Are they even informed guesses? In a 2003
address at the California Institute of Technology, author Michael Crichton
discussed this aspect of the Drake Equation:
Tis serious-looking equation gave SETI a serious footing as a
legitimate intellectual inquiry. Te problem, of course, is that
none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be
estimated. Te only way to work the equation is to fll in with
guesses. And guessesjust so were clearare merely expres-
sions of prejudice. Nor can there be informed guesses. If you
need to state how many planets with life choose to communi-
cate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It is
simply prejudice.
2
Crichton went on to claim that since the Drake Equation cannot be tested,
SETI is therefore based not on science but on faith. It is possible, however,
to bring relevant data to bear on the issue of extraterrestrial intelligence, as I
hope to demonstrate here.
1. Public Broadcasting System, The Drake Equation, 2004, available at http://www.pbs.org/
wgbh/nova/space/drake-equation.html.
2. Michael Crichton, Aliens Cause Global Warming, Caltech Michelin Lecture, 17 January 2003,
available at http://www.michaelcrichton.net.
204
Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of Interstellar Communication
Drake Parameter Estimates
Te parameters of the Drake Equation have been estimated numerous times using
methods that range from pure guessing to various sorts of statistical analyses. Te
initial values assigned by Drake and his colleagues to each parameter are as follows:
R* = 10.0/year
f
p
= 0.5
n
e
= 2.0
f
l
= 1.0
f
i
= 0.01
f
c
= 0.01
L = 10,000 years
Tese estimates produce a value of 0.01 for N.
Using redefned variables, Carl Sagan generated a diferent set of values:
3
R* = 4.0 10
11

f
p
= 0.33
n
e
= 2.0
f
l
= 0.33
f
i
= 0.1
f
c
= 0.1
L = 0.01
Tese values result in a value of approximately 10
7
for N, an estimate wildly
diferent from the one proposed 19 years earlier by Drake and his colleagues.
According to the PBS NOVA Origins series,
4
Drakes current estimated
values are:
R* = 5.0/year
f
p
= 0.5
n
e
= 2.0
f
l
= 1.0
f
i
= 0.2
f
c
= 1.0
L = 10,000 years
3. Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), p. 301. Sagan also redened R* as the
number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy and L as the fraction of a planetary lifetime graced by a
technical civilization (p. 299). These changes obviously lead to a very different estimate of N.
4. Public Broadcasting System, The Drake Equation.
205
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Tese values give an N of 10,000 communicating civilizations in the
Milky Way.
Te difculty with these values is that they are merely estimates. I believe
there are empirical means by which these estimates can be enhanced. To do
so, we must reevaluate some known facts in order to narrow our estimates of
the two most intractable terms in Drakes formula, f
i
and f
c
. First, however,
we will look at how the other parameters have been estimated.
Over the past half century, R* has generally been defned as the rate of star
formation per year in the galaxy. However, it has also been defned as the rate
of formation of suitable stars, meaning Sun-like stars rather than, for example,
red giants. Tus, estimates range from about 20 stars of all sorts to 1 Sun-like
star per year. Carl Sagan defned R* simply as the number of stars in the
Milky Way Galaxy, without referring to their rate of formation.
5
Te huge
diference between the rate of star formation and the number of stars in the
galaxy is a discrepancy that profoundly infuences the results of the equation.
When R* is defned as the rate of star formation per year in the galaxy
or as the rate of suitable star formation in the galaxy, its approximate value
can be roughly calculated on the basis of observed data; and most estimates
that use one of these defnitions generate values between about 5 and 20.
Tere is, however, much less data to inform our estimates of Drakes other
parameters. What do we know about f
p
, the fraction of stars with planets?
Te frst confrmed exoplanet was discovered orbiting the star 51 Pegasi in
October 1995. As of 27 February 2012, a total of 1,790 host stars with 2,321
extrasolar planet candidates had been detected.
6
NASAs Kepler mission team
recently located the frst confrmed rocky planet orbiting a star other than the
Sun. Named Kepler-10b and approximately 1.4 times the size of Earth, this
planet was found on the basis of data gathered by the Kepler space telescope
between May 2009 and January 2010.
7
Kepler-10bs orbit takes less than a
day, indicating that it is more than 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is
to the Sun and must therefore be blazing hot and uninhabitable.
8
In June 2002, Geofrey Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley
and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution in Washington announced their
5. Sagan, Cosmos, p. 299.
6. NASA, Planet Candidates, http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/candidates/ (accessed
26 March 2012); see also http://exoplanets.newscientistapps.com/.
7. NASA, NASAs Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet, http://www.nasa.gov/topics/
universe/features/rocky_planet.html (accessed 30 January 2011).
8. NASA, Kepler Discoveries, http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/ (accessed 21 July
2013). As of 21 July 2013, NASAs Kepler team had a conrmed planet count of 135.
206
Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of Interstellar Communication
discovery of a planet approximately 4 times as massive as Jupiter orbiting the
star 55 Cancri at a distance of about 500 million miles; 55 Cancri is about the
same mass and age as the Sun and is located about 41 light-years from Earth
in the constellation Cancer. Tis massive planet takes 14 years to complete
a single orbit, and its enormous gravity may draw cosmic debris away from
other planets orbiting closer to 55 Cancri, thus protecting them from comet
and asteroid impacts just as Jupiter protects Earth.
Four additional planets have since been found closer to 55 Cancri. Te
planet closest to the star is about the size of Neptune and orbits in about
three days. Te second planet is slightly smaller than Jupiter and orbits in
14.7 days, while the third is similar in size to Saturn and completes its orbit
every 44 days. Te fourth planet, the most recently discovered, is about 45
times as large as Earth and appears to be similar to Saturn in composition. It
completes its orbit in 260 days. While no Earth-like planets have been dis-
covered orbiting 55 Cancri, all of the gas-giant in our solar system are orbited
by large, rocky moons. It appears that some of these, such as Enceladus, a
moon of Saturn, and Europa and Callisto, two of Jupiters moons, may have
underground liquid water and, potentially, the ingredients necessary for life.
9
In addition to gas-giant planets, super-Earth planets may orbit up to a
third of stars.
10
Tese planets are only slightly larger than Earth and may be
rocky rather than gaseous. At least 45 super-Earth planets are known, but
nearly all orbit so close to their stars as to render them incapable of supporting
life. Te Sun-like star HD 40307, about 42 light-years from Earth, appears
to be orbited by at least three super-Earth planets.
11
Discovery of the smallest
super-Earth planet, Gliese 581 e (only 1.9 Earth masses), was announced on
21 April 2009. Its orbit is much too close to its star to be habitable, but another
super-Earth planet, Gliese 581 d, found on 24 April 2007, appears to be about
8 Earth masses and far enough from its star so that liquid water could be pres-
ent. Te star Gliese 581 is in the constellation Libra and is about 20 light-years
from Earth. It is a red dwarf approximately one-third the size of the Sun, and it
appears to have at least four planets.
12
Kepler-22b is the frst confrmed extra-
solar planet known to orbit in the habitable zonethat is, where liquid water
9. NASA, Callisto Makes a Big Splash, 2009, available at http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/
headlines/ast22oct98_2.htm (accessed 17 July 2009).
10. D. Vergano, Super-Earth Planets Discovered, USA Today, available at http://www.usatoday.
com/tech/science/space/2008-06-16-super-Earth-planets_N.htm (accessed 17 July 2009).
11. Vergano, Super-Earth Planets Discovered.
12. M. Mayor et al., The HARPS Search for Southern Extra-solar Planets. XVII. An Earth-Mass
Planet in the GJ 581 Planetary System, Astronomy & Astrophysics, ms. no. GJ 581 (2009).
207
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
could exist on its surfaceof a Sun-like star. It is approximately 2.4 times the
radius of Earth, and its surface composition is unknown.
13
Te Sun, although often misleadingly referred to in the popular press as
an average star, is classifed on the Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) Diagram as
a Type G2V star. Te H-R Diagram plots star color (an indicator of surface
temperature) in relation to luminosity (an indicator of intrinsic brightness)
and shows star color, temperature, luminosity, spectral type, and evolution-
ary stage, although it does not indicate the frequency of the types. A G2V
star such as the Sun is a main-sequence yellow dwarf, which is, in our own
galaxy, a relatively uncommon type. Up to 90 percent of the approximately
400 billion stars in the Milky Way are (Type M) red dwarfs, while Sun-like
stars constitute only about 5 percent.
14
Red dwarfs, both smaller and cooler
than the Sun, emit large x-ray bursts but not much ultraviolet radiation. Te
former is not favorable for life as we know it, while the latter may be essential.
Nevertheless, Todd Henry suggests that more attention be paid to M-type
stars because, while their habitable zones are very narrow, there are so many
more of them than G-type stars that the odds of M-type stars having planets
in the habitable zone is fairly high.
15
In 2003, Charles Lineweaver and Daniel Grether suggested that at least 20
percent of Sun-like stars have planets, but recent estimates are much higher.
16

Alan Boss, for example, proposes that every Sun-like star may, on average,
have one Earth-like planet, meaning that there could be as many as 100 bil-
lion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone.
17
Te value of f
l
, the fraction of hospitable planets that actually develop
life, has generally been thought to be very high, usually 1.0. Given that life
developed on Earth soon after it cooled enough to permit liquid water, and
that life on Earth inhabits a very wide range of ecologies, this estimate seems
reasonable. Te estimates of f
i
and f
c
, however, are far more uncertain than
those for any of the previous terms in the equation.
13. NASA, NASAs Kepler Mission Conrms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star,
available at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepscicon-brieng.html
(accessed 26 March 2012).
14. Maggie Turnbull, SETI and the Smallest Stars, 2004, available at http://donate.seti.org/page.
aspx?pid=1012 (accessed 31 August 2013).
15. M Dwarfs: The Search for Life Is On: Interview with Todd Henry, Astrobiology Magazine, available at
http://www.astrobio.net/interview/1694/m-dwarfs-the-search-for-life-is-on (accessed 21 July 2013).
16. C. H. Lineweaver and D. Grether, What Fraction of Sun-like Stars Have Planets?, The
Astrophysical Journal 598, no. 2 (2003): 13501360.
17. Alan Boss, The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets (New York: Basic Books, 2009).
208
Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of Interstellar Communication
Estimating f
i
According to the Principle of Mediocrity, Earth, the solar system, our location
in the Milky Way, the Milky Way galaxy, and its location in the universe are
not special in any sense.
18
Hence, Earth is representative of other Earth-like
planets in other Sun-like solar systems. So, while any data we can bring to
bear on f
i
the fraction of planets with life that develop intelligent lifeis
based on a sample size of only 1, those data are nevertheless valid and reliable.
But what evidence do we actually have? How many intelligent species have
existed on Earth?
Intelligence
Like many, if not most, constructs in the social and behavioral sciences, the
nature of intelligence has been under scrutiny for more than a century, but
no single, universally accepted defnition presently exists. In a general sense,
however, two defnitions seem to cover the territory. Te frst defnition, pro-
posed in a letter signed by 52 scholars with expertise in intelligence and related
felds, appeared in the 13 December 1994 issue of Te Wall Street Journal in
response to exchanges over Charles Murray and Richard Herrnsteins book
Te Bell Curve:
Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other
things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think
abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn
from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic
skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it refects a broader and deeper
capability for comprehending our surroundingscatching on,
making sense of things, or fguring out what to do.
19
Te second was ofered by the American Psychological Association in 1995:
18. David J. Darling, Mediocrity, Principle of, Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy and
Spaceight, 2005, http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/mediocrity.html (accessed
29June 2013).
19. Linda S. Gottfredson, Mainstream Science on Intelligence, available at http://www.udel.edu/
educ/gottfredson/reprints/1994WSJmainstream.pdf (accessed 1 July 2013) and http://www.
udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstream.pdf (accessed 1 July 2013). See also C.
Murray and R. J. Herrnstein, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life
(New York: Free Press, 1994).
209
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Individuals difer from one another in their ability to under-
stand complex ideas, to adapt efectively to the environment,
to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reason-
ing, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these
individual diferences can be substantial, they are never entirely
consistent: a given persons intellectual performance will vary on
diferent occasions, in diferent domains, as judged by diferent
criteria. Concepts of intelligence are attempts to clarify and
organize this complex set of phenomena.
20
Intelligence is very commonly addressed from a psychometric perspec-
tive; that is, intelligence is efectively what is measured by tests such as the
Stanford-Binet, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test, and others. Scores on
such tests, recorded as IQ (Intelligence Quotient) or g (General Intelligence)
numbers, are considered reliable even though their validity has often been
challenged. Critics question whether they can accurately measure the range
of what should be thought of as intelligence. Largely in response to this
issue, psychologists such as Howard Gardiner and Robert J. Sternberg have
proposed theories of multiple intelligences, each of which may be possessed
in greater or lesser quantities.
21
Sternberg ofers a triarchic theory wherein
intelligence involves the degree to which individuals successfully adapt to
environmental changes throughout their life-span.
22
He identifes three
aspects of intelligenceanalytic, creative, and practicalonly one of which,
the analytic, is usually addressed by intelligence tests. Analytic questions
typically have one right answer, while practical questions may have several
correct responses. Gardiner included verbal-linguistic and mathematical-
logical intelligences, mirroring the categories used by traditional intelligence
tests. He also included visual-spatial, body-kinesthetic, auditory-musical, and
inter- and intra-personal communication, for a total of seven intelligences
(naturalism is sometimes included as an eighth). Gardiner argues that psy-
chometric tests ignore aspects of intelligence beyond the verbal, logical, and
20. Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, Report of a Task Force established by the Board of
Scientic Affairs of the American Psychological Association, 7 August 1995, available at http://
www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/apa_01.html.
21. Howard Gardiner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligence (New York: Basic Books,
1985); R. J. Sternberg, Beyond IQ: A Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985).
22. Sternberg, Beyond IQ.
210
Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of Interstellar Communication
some aspects of spatial both in the types of questions asked and in how the
tests are administered (i.e., pencil and paper or by computer).
Tere is an enormous amount of literature on the nature of intelligence
and its measurement. Te question that concerns me here, however, is this:
What sort of intelligence do we have in mind when we talk of extraterrestrial
intelligence? While Gardiners theory of multiple intelligences lacks wide
support, Sternberg and others feel that intelligence cannot be reduced to a
single number such as IQ or g. What sort of intelligence might an extrater-
restrial require in order to develop a technological civilization capable of
interstellar communication?
Which of Earths Animals Are Intelligent?
Given the two defnitions of intelligence quoted above and setting aside for
the moment the possibility of various sorts of multiple intelligences, which
animals can be considered the most intelligent? Often we judge the animals
that behave most like humans to be the most intelligent. We therefore regard
great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans) as quite intelligent.
Since the use of tools signals intelligence, and since each of these species uses
tools, they are pretty smart in our book. Although tool use among Cetaceans
(specifcally, the bottlenose dolphin) has been observed only recently, dol-
phins, whales, and porpoises are generally deemed very bright, as well. All
mammals appear to engage in at least some pre-adult learning from parents
and others. Some birds, such as crows and parrots, appear to be precocious.
Te African gray parrot, for example, seems to be remarkably adept at both
linguistic and cognitive activities. Cephalopods (octopus, squid, cuttlefsh,
nautilus) are thought the most intelligent of nonvertebrates. Indeed, research-
ers claim to have observed play behavior, a strong correlate of cortical devel-
opment, in the octopus.
23
Te nature of chimpanzee and gorilla intelligence is undoubtedly similar
to our own, but what of dolphin intelligence or octopus intelligence? Does
the notion of a dolphin IQ or g in an octopus make any sense? If we were to
apply Gardiners criteria for intelligence to dolphins or octopi, we might make
a case for both having very high body-kinesthetic and visual-spatial intelli-
gence. Dolphins might also rate highly in terms of intra- and interpersonal
communication as well as auditory-musical intelligence. Tey could even
demonstrate mathematical-logical intelligence. Since we have been unable
23. Garry Chick, What Is Play For? Sexual Selection and the Evolution of Play, Play and Culture
Studies 3 (2001): 325; Robert F. Service, Random Samples: Suckers for Fun, Science 281,
no. 5379 (1998): 909.
211
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
to decipher their language of whistles, clicks, and so on, no meaningful
assessment of their verbal-linguistic intelligence can be made.
What Good Is Intelligence?
Why and how did humans end up being as intelligent as we are? While the
exact course of human evolution is open to debate, one distinctive feature
of hominids from the earliest period to the present is increasing brain size
and complexity. Why this happens is not clear, although theories abound.
Intelligence is not required for evolutionary success as measured either in
terms of the number of individual organisms or in biomass. Te biomass of
Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), for example, is estimated to be between
125 million and 6 billion metric tons.
24
Oceanic bacteria comprise perhaps
150 times the cumulative biomass of humans and, given their size, are many
orders of magnitude greater in number.
Nevertheless, intelligence surely helped our evolutionary ancestors in the
struggle to survive since humans have few other natural weapons. Tere is
now only one human species despite evidence that two or more may have
existed simultaneously at one or more times in the past. Perhaps our direct
ancestors contributed to the demise of our less-well-adapted relatives. Over
the past few decades, we have all but exterminated our hominoid relatives
(along with numerous other species). However, the crucial adaptation after
the ancestors of both humans and chimpanzees diverged seems to have been
not intelligence but an upright stance. Indeed, some estimates place an
upright stance some 2 million years prior to encephalization and 500,000
years prior to tool manufacture and use.
25
Te key here, by the way, is manu-
facture and use, as all other extant hominoids use tools but do not necessarily
manufacture them.
24. Krill (Euphausiacea ), National Geographic, 2009, available at http://animals.
nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/krill.html (accessed 17 July 2009); Stephen
Nicol and Yoshinari Endo, Krill Fisheries of the World, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 367
(Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1997), available at http://
www.fao.org/docrep/003/w5911e/w5911e00.HTM (accessed 17 July 2009); Whos Eating
Who?, Classroom Antarctica, 2005, available at http://www.antarctica.gov.au/__data/assets/
pdf_le/0003/20793/ml_394205001041667_2_whoseatingwho_lowlife.pdf (accessed 30
August 2013).
25. Tim D. White, Gen Suwa, and Berhane Asfaw, Australopithecus ramidus, A New Species of
Early Hominid from Aramis, Ethiopia, Nature 371 (1994):306312; Sileshi Semaw et al.,
2.6-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools and Associated Bones from OGS-6 and OGS-7, Gona, Afar,
Ethiopia, Journal of Human Evolution 45, no. 2 (2003): 169177.
212
Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of Interstellar Communication
In 2005, Mark Flinn, David Geary, and Carol Ward reviewed theories of
why hominids developed high intelligence and found little evidence for the
majority of them.
26
Environmentally based theories failed to explain why
other animals that faced ecological problems similar to those likely confront-
ing early humans did not evolve similar cognitive abilities. Explanations that
posited intelligence as a social tool explanations ran into like problems. Social
group size and brain size correlate across many taxa, and hominid group size
appears to have been about the same as that of other extant hominoids.
27
So
why did other social species not develop high intelligence?
Richard Alexanders ecological dominance-social competition hypothesis
ofers an answer to this question.
28
Briefy, Alexander theorizes that hominids
became the ecologically dominant species, meaning that selection pres-
sure on them gradually shifted from external causes (e.g., predators, climate,
resources) to internal ones (that is, interactions with members of their own
species). Flinn et al. present evidence that supports the ecological-dominance
hypothesis and that indicates signifcant increases of ecological dominance
roughly coincided with the appearance of H. erectus.
29
Tey do not, however,
speculate on how pre-Homo human ancestors established ecological domi-
nance while other hominids did not.
Intelligence and the Ability To Manipulate the Environment
Cetaceans and cephalopods have yet another problem. Even if they are deemed
intelligent according to one or more of Gardiners criteria, they fail in terms
26. Mark V. Flinn, David C. Geary, and Carol V. Ward, Ecological Dominance, Social Competition,
and Coalitionary Arms Races: Why Humans Developed Extraordinary Intelligence, Evolution
and Human Behavior 26, no. 1 (2005): 1046.
27. H. Kudo, and R. I. M. Dunbar, Neocortex Size and Social Network Size in Primates, Animal
Behaviour 62, no. 4 (2001): 711722; Carel P. van Schaik and Robert O. Deaner, Life History
and Cognitive Evolution in Primates, in Animal Social Complexity: Intelligence, Culture, and
Individualized Societies, ed. Frans B. M. de Waal and Peter L. Tyack (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2003), pp. 525.
28. Flinn et al., Ecological Dominance, passim; Richard D. Alexander, Evolution of the Human
Psyche, in The Human Revolution: Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origins
of Modern Humans, ed. Paul Mellars and Chris Stringer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1989), pp. 455513. Animals such as lions, elephants, dolphins, and orcas seem to
be ecologically dominant, and their reproductive success appears to be inuenced heavily by
interactions with conspecics.
29. Flinn et al., Ecological Dominance, p. 22.
213
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
of J. L. Castis requirements for the emergence of intelligence.
30
Casti points
out that interstellar communication requires tool-making, and he identifes
the conditions necessary for developing such technology:
1. Development of an atmosphere containing free oxygen
2. Migration of life from the sea to land
3. Emergence of hands and eyes
4. Use of tools
5. Appearance of social structures
31
Leaving aside the issue of an oxygen-rich atmosphere, what about the other
criteria? First, if movement from sea to land is required, the cetaceans have
it backwards, as their ancestors were land-dwellers. Cephalopod tentacles,
while apparently handy in the water, are all but useless out of it. Second,
some sort of hand-like appendages are essential for making and using tools.
Various creatures grasp and manipulate food or objects by means of claws
(e.g., crabs, lobsters, scorpions, praying mantises), their bodies (e.g., snakes),
their mouths (e.g., dogs), mouthparts (e.g., ants), or beaks (e.g., birds). None
of these means seem to be as efective as hands, however. Many animals also
have eyes or some type of light-sensing organ, and eyes come in many designs.
Whether sight evolved independently in insects, vertebrates, and mollusks,
for example, or whether the same genetic structure underlies all eyes remains
in dispute.
32
Moreover, some species whose ancestors had eyes have lost them
(e.g., cave-dwelling fsh and insects), while others augment eyesight with
other sensory or signaling apparatus such as echolocation (e.g., bats and ceta-
ceans), electric felds (e.g., eels), or light-producing organs (e.g., frefies and
many species of deep-sea animals). Still, complex eyes dominate. Tomarev et
al. note that while only 6 of 30 animal phyla have complex eyes, these 6 are
the dominant animals on the planet.
33
Tey estimate that 95 percent of all
animal species have complex eyes based on about a dozen diferent designs.
Intelligence and Technological Development
So how do Castis criteria apply to f
i
? If Casti is right, aquatic species will
never develop substantial technologies. So we can eliminate cephalopods and
cetaceans, however intelligent, from our list of potential communicators
30. J. L. Casti, Paradigms Lost: Tackling the Unanswered Mysteries of Modern Science (New York:
Avon Books, 1989).
31. Casti, Paradigms Lost, pp. 357359.
32. Stanislav I. Tomarev et al., Squid Pax-6 and Eye Development, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences U.S.A. 94, no. 6 (1997): 24212426.
33. Tomarev et al., Squid Pax-6 and Eye Development, p. 2421.
214
Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of Interstellar Communication
via technology and, therefore, any similar species that might exist on extra-
solar planets. Somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million living species have been
cataloged on Earth, and estimates for the actual number of species run much
higher (generally between 2 and 50 million but some up to 100 million). Of
these, there are about 800 known living species of cephalopods and about 80
living species of cetaceans. Hence, cetaceans constitute less than 0.05 percent
(0.0005) of extant species even when using only 2 million as an estimate for
the total number of living species. Tere are currently approximately 18 to 20
species in the superfamily Hominoidea (apes and humans). Tese include 12
species divided among 4 genera of the family Hylobatidae and 6, or possibly
7, species in the family Hominidae, which comprises humans, gorillas (1 or
2 species), chimpanzees (2 species), and orangutans (2 species).
34
When 20
species of hominoids are included in that total of 2 million extant species, pri-
mates constitute only 0.001 percent (0.00001) of the living species on Earth.
Moreover, only 1 of these 20 species has developed a technology capable of
interstellar communication. In sum, the development of high intelligence
on Earth has been extremely rare, and there is little evidence to support the
idea that its development is inevitable. Even if some forms of intelligence do
evolve on other planets, there is no good reason to believe that at least one
of them must be human-like. Hence, high estimates of f
i
may be not only
anthropocentric but also highly optimistic.
At least three signifcant unanswered questions remain:
1. Why is high intelligence worth having?
2. Why, if it is worth having, did it develop only once in more than
3.5 billion years of biological evolution on Earth?
3. How did it evolve at all?
Te answers to these questions, assuming we ever discover them, will allow
much more precise estimates of f
i
than we are presently capable of producing.
Estimating f
c
Drake defned f
c
as the fraction of intelligent civilizations both able and will-
ing to communicate. Te concept of civilization seemingly eliminates the
34. Gibbon Conservation Center, http://www.gibboncenter.org/about_gibbons.htm; Animal
InfoGorilla, AnimalInfo.org, http://www.animalinfo.org/species/primate/gorigori.htm; P.
Myers et al., The Animal Diversity Web, http://animaldiversity.org (accessed 25 October 2005);
All about Orangutans! Orangutan Foundation International, http://www.orangutan.org/facts/
orangutanfacts.php.
215
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
possibility that intelligence could appear in forms other than collectives of
organisms. So Fred Hoyles fctional Black Cloud, an intelligent entity com-
posed of a network of disparate molecules that arrives at our solar system,
discovers intelligent life on Earth, and proceeds to communicate, is ruled
out.
35
Hive intelligenceexhibited by social animals such as ants, termites,
and many bees and portrayed, always negatively, in science fction (in flms
such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, on television with Star Treks Borg,
and in novels such as Arthur C. Clarkes Childhoods End)also appears to
be out.
36
So what must a collective of individually intelligent organisms have
in order to develop a means of interstellar communication? Minimally, they
must be able to develop information, share it, and work cooperatively. Tat
means they must have a culture and some sort of social organization.
What Is Culture?
Defnitions of culture abound; in their 1952 book, A. L. Kroeber and Clyde
Kluckhohn identifed more than 160 defnitions, and many more have been
developed since then.
37
Edward Burnett Tylor ofered the frst defnition of
culture from an anthropological perspective in 1871, describing it as that
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom,
and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of
society.
38
While Tylors gloss is still useful, a more cognitively oriented def-
nition may have greater value in the present context.
39
Ward Goodenoughs
highly infuential defnition of culture is a step in the right direction:
A societys culture consists of whatever it is one has to know
or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its
members. Culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not
consist of things, behavior, or emotions. It is rather an organi-
zation of these things. It is the form of things that people have
35. F. Hoyle, The Black Cloud (New York: Signet, 1959).
36. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (dir. Don Siegel, prod. Walter Wanger; Allied Artists, 1956);
Arthur C. Clarke, Childhoods End (New York: Ballantine Books, 1953).
37. A. L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Denitions
(Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum, 1952).
38. Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology,
Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom, 2 vols., 7th ed. (1871; New York: Brentanos,
1924).
39. For a categorization of types of denitions of culture, see Garry Chick, Cultural Complexity:
The Concept and Its Measurement, Cross-Cultural Research 31, no. 4 (1997): 275307.
216
Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of Interstellar Communication
in mind, their models for perceiving, relating, and otherwise
interpreting them.
40
Goodenough thus holds culture to be information. John M. Roberts devel-
oped a related defnition of culture in 1964 that augments Goodenoughs:
It is possible to regard all culture as information and to view any
single culture as an information economy in which informa-
tion is received or created, retrieved, transmitted, utilized, and
even lost.
41
Te information economy of which the developed world is a part dates
to antiquity. While signifcant information attributable to ancient civiliza-
tions has already been lost, such as the engineering of the Egyptian pyramids
or the rules for the Aztecs famed Mesoamerican ballgame), cultural knowl-
edge stored in the heads of members of extinct or vanishing indigenous
peoples may represent a far greater loss. Nonetheless, difusion of cultural
information has surely occurred over the millennia. Te question, of course,
is how much of our present cultural informationwhat we need to know
to operate in a way acceptable to our fellowscan be traced to antiquity.
Since we lack a means to measure culture content as well as comprehensive
knowledge of that content between then and now, this determination is not
presently possible.
Culture and the Development of Technology
Being intelligent, having hands and eyes, and living in a favorable environ-
ment, while necessary conditions, do not appear to be sufcient in themselves
for the development of advanced technology. Castis fnal prerequisite for the
development of advanced technologies, including interstellar communica-
tion, was social organization.
42
Te problem is that all human groups have
social organization of one form or another but not all are technologically
complex. Nor does complexity in one area of human life predict complexity
40. W. H. Goodenough, Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics, in Report of the Seventh Annual
Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Study, Monograph Series on Languages
and Linguistics 9, ed. Paul L. Garvin (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1957), pp.
167173.
41. J. M. Roberts, The Self Management of Cultures, in Explorations in Cultural Anthropology, ed.
W. H. Goodenough (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), pp. 433454, esp. p. 438.
42. Casti, Paradigms Lost, p. 359.
217
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
in others. Te Kayap, for example, a native Amazonian tribe, are similar
to many other small-scale societies in having a rich ceremonial life and a
complex cosmology without ever having developed a complex technology.
43

However, the development of complex technologies is commonly seen as an
extension of the development of complex cultures. Ways of assessing cultural
complexity exist that do not include technological complexity as a defning
factor but that nevertheless accurately predict technological complexity. Te
most common, and probably most promising, relates to aspects of popula-
tion size and density.
In a prescient 1956 paper, Raoul Naroll linked the complexity of social
organization to population size.
44
Specifcally, he showed that the size of the
largest community in a society correlates with measures of cultural complex-
ity, such as the number of craft specializations and what he termed organi-
zational ramifcation, that is, the number of control ofcials, such as police
or military, in a society. About 10 years later, Robert Carneiro found that
population size of societies correlates with organizational complexity, des-
ignated as involving the coordinated activity of two or more persons.
45

Edgar Bowden determined that his own Index of Sociocultural Development,
based on earlier work by Carneiro using Guttman Scaling of the presence or
absence of 354 cultural traits to measure cultural complexity, correlated at
.97 with the base-10 logarithm of the maximum settlement size of a com-
munity.
46
Most recently, Michelle Kline and Robert Boyd, using data from
a cross-cultural sample of 10 societies in Oceania from around the time of
Western contact (c. 1770), examined the relationship between population
size and the number and complexity of tools used in marine foraging. Tey
found that islands with larger populations had more kinds of marine foraging
43. J. Bamberger-Turner, Environment and Cultural Classication: A Study of the Northern
Kayap (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA,
1967); Vanessa Lea, Mebengokre (Kayap) Onomastics: A Facet of Houses as Total Social
Facts in Central Brazil, Man, n.s., 27, no. 1 (1992): 129153.
44. Raoul Naroll, A Preliminary Index of Social Development, American Anthropologist 58, no. 4
(1956): 687715.
45. Robert L. Carneiro, On the Relationship Between Size of Population and Complexity of Social
Organization, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 23, no. 3 (1967): 234243.
46. Edgar Bowden, An Index of Sociocultural Development Applicable to Precivilized Societies,
American Anthropologist 71, no. 3 (1969): 454461. Robert L. Carneiro, Scale Analysis as an
Instrument for the Study of Cultural Evolution, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 18, no. 2
(1962): 149169.
218
Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of Interstellar Communication
tools and more complex tools than smaller, isolated populations.
47
Hence, at
least on Earth, the development of complex technology requires intelligence,
the physical ability to manipulate the environment, culture, and minimum
limits for population size and density. And these factors must interact with
the environment, since population size alone is not enough. It has been esti-
mated, for example, that Tenochtitln was one of the worlds largest cities at
the time of the Spanish conquest in 1521. Nevertheless, the superiority of
Spanish technology, especially in terms of metallurgy, assured their defeat of
the Aztecs, who lacked the raw materials for the production of iron or bronze,
as I will discuss in more detail below.
Many estimates of f
c
are also in the 1 in 10 (0.1) range. Is this reason-
able, given the data we have available from Earth? Applying the Principle of
Mediocrity, we can ask what percent of known societies/cultures achieved,
or would have achieved, the technological sophistication to make interstellar
contact possible? No database covers all known societies/cultures from the
beginning of such groups until now, and how does one determine where one
society/culture ends and another begins? Te Roman Empire, for example,
never developed the means for interstellar communication, but Western cul-
tures of the 20th century were able to do so in part because they retain cultural
knowledge developed by the citizens and subjects of Imperial Rome, who
utilized cultural knowledge developed even earlier by the Greeks (and many
others). So, while the political entity known now as the Roman Empire has
long since disappeared, much of the culture associated with it has not.
How can knowledge of human societies be used to estimate f
c
? One way
would be to choose a sample of historical civilizations from around the world
(such as those of the ancient Egyptians, HarappaMohenjo-daro, the Inca,
the Natchez, the Greeks, and so on) and to speculate on their potential for
becoming technologically sophisticated enough to engage in interstellar com-
munication. Jared Diamond, in his Pulitzer Prizewinning book Guns, Germs,
and Steel, ofered environmental reasons why some societies progressed tech-
nologically while others did not.
48
Te West had access to the raw materials
(including plant and animal species capable of being domesticated) that were
necessary to support technical culture, as well as lines of communication and
migration that did not cross inhospitable territory. In his next book, Collapse,
Diamond provided case studies of several societies that failed due to various
47. Michelle A. Kline and Robert Boyd, Population Size Predicts Technological Complexity in
Oceania, Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277, no. 1693 (2010): 25592564.
48. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1997), passim.
219
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
combinations of environmental degradation, climate change, hostile neigh-
bors, lack of friendly trading partners, and inept responses to environmental
problems.
49
While his data and methods have been criticized, Diamond raised
important issues and provided answers that may have some validity. It may be
that the Inca and the Aztecs, for example, if left on their own, would never
have developed advanced technology because they lacked the raw materials
in their respective environments that would have enabled them to do so. Te
ancient Chinese were extremely inventive and great engineers, but many of
their inventions (e.g., gunpowder and moveable type) never had the impact in
ancient Asia that was later seen in the West. But cherry-picking past civiliza-
tions and then forecasting their possible technological evolutions had they
not collapsed or been conquered involves speculations better reserved for
science fction.
50
An alternative is to take a sample of societies from the recent anthro-
pological record and then calculate what percentage of them ultimately
developed advanced technology. For this task, I chose the Standard Cross-
Cultural Sample (SCCS), developed by George Murdock and Douglas White
in 1969.
51
Te SCCS is composed of 186 societies chosen specifcally to
represent a global distribution of cultures and languages in order to minimize
Galtons Problem. Te SCCS is widely used in cross-cultural comparative
research, and codes for approximately 2,000 variables are currently avail-
able for it, including one for cultural complexity. In 1973, Murdock and
Caterina Provost coded the SCCS for cultural complexity based on ten
groups of comparable traits, each ordered according to a fve-point scale of
relative complexity.
52
Tese traits are 1) Writing and Records, 2) Fixity of
Residence, 3) Agriculture, 4) Urbanization, 5) Technological Specialization,
6) Land Transport, 7) Money, 8) Density of Population, 9) Level of Political
Integration, and 10) Social Stratifcation. A major weakness of the SCCS is
that it lacks any modern, industrial societies.
Murdock and Provost assumed that their index is unidimensional, an
assumption demonstrated by the fact that they added the 10 individual
scales to provide a single, overall index of cultural complexity. However,
49. Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking, 2004).
50. See, e.g., Bread and Circuses, Star Trek, Episode 43 (dir. D. McDougall and R. Gist, 1966), in
which the Enterprise discovers an Earth-like planet on which the Roman Empire never fell.
51. G. P. Murdock and D. R. White, Standard Cross-cultural Sample, Ethnology 8 (1969):
329369.
52. G. P. Murdock and C. Provost, Measurement of Cultural Complexity, Ethnology 11 (1973):
254295.
220
Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of Interstellar Communication
Table 14.1: Principal-Components Analysis of the
SCCS Index of Cultural Complexity
a
Complexity Scales Factor 1 Factor 2 Communality
Writing and Records 0.848
b
0.150 0.741
Land Transport 0.846 0.047 0.719
Social Stratication 0.716 0.402 0.675
Level of Political Integration 0.669 0.466 0.665
Technological Specialization 0.606 0.442 0.563
Money 0.578 0.401 0.495
Fixity of Residence 0.068 0.918 0.847
Agriculture 0.213 0.849 0.766
Density of Population 0.284 0.824 0.759
Urbanization 0.454 0.542 0.500
Percentage of Total Variance
Explained by Unrotated Factors
52.77 14.53
a. N of Cases = 186.
b. The variables that dene each factor are set in bold type.
a principal-components analysis (with varimax rotation, factors extracted
where the eigenvalue is
<
=
1) of the 10 individual scales indicates two factors,
not one, as assumed by Murdock and Provost. Factor 1 appears to be related to
social and technological complexity, while Factor 2 contains variables related
to the complexity of the human ecology of societies. Tese variables are shown
in Table 14.1.
Whether or not this index is an appropriate measure of cultural complex-
ity is debatable, depending on how one defnes both culture and complexity.
53

Nevertheless, it is the most widely used measure of the construct and may be
of some value for estimating f
c
. It is also important because Factor 2 is closely
related to alternative measures of cultural complexity, discussed below.
How many of the societies in the SCCS either did or would have been
likely to develop technology that would permit interstellar contact? Of the
186 societies in the sample, 7 have the maximum possible score of 30 when
the six variables making up the social and technological complexity factor
are summed, while 7 more have a score of 29. Tese 14 societies therefore
constitute about 7.5 percent of the SCCS. Only one society has a score of
28, while three score 27 and two score 26; so a score of 29 is something of
53. For a discussion of these issues, see Chick, Cultural Complexity, passim.
221
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
a natural breakpoint. Te 14 most complex societies, and the year at which
their culture was pinpointed, are:














Burmese 1965
Koreans 1947
Babylonians 1750 BCE
Romans 110
Balinese 1958
Irish 1932
Basques 1934
Javanese 1954
Uttar Pradeshi 1945
Siamese 1955
Chinese 1936
Japanese 1950
Turks 1950
Russians 1955
Would any or all of these societies, left to their own devices, have devel-
oped the means for interstellar communication? Despite Murdock and
Whites eforts to ensure the independence of the societies in the SCCS, it is
clear that this condition does not apply to these 14. Babylonian culture surely
had some infuence on the Romans via the Greeks and some knowledge of it
passed through the Romans to us. All of the other societies had at least some
contact with each other and contact with Western (and therefore Roman)
culture by the date of Murdock and Provosts study. So is it most appropri-
ate to regard these societies as having only 1 technical tradition, 14 diferent
ones, or something in between?
Karl Jansky discovered radio waves emanating from the Milky Way in
1932, and Grote Reber constructed the frst dish radio telescope at his home
in Wheaton, Illinois, in 1937. So human society has had the capability of
receiving extraterrestrial signals for approximately 75 years while sending
them (from commercial radio stations, at least) for approximately a dozen
years longer. Of the 14 societies in the sample, major radio telescopes are cur-
rently located in 5 (Korea, India, China, Japan, and Russia).
54
Optimistically
then, out of a sample of 186 human cultures only 5 (2.7 percent) might
have developed the means to communicate with extraterrestrials. Less opti-
mistically, since there is really only one cultural tradition of radio-telescope
54. Gallery of Radio Telescopes, http://www.nro.nao.ac.jp/~kotaro/RTs/rts.html.
222
Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of Interstellar Communication
development and usea tradition passing though the Roman Empire
only 0.5 percent of human civilizations would ultimately have developed the
means to communicate with extraterrestrials.
55
Hence, one fnding from this
exercise is that the value for f
c
may lie between 0.005 and 0.027.
One Culture or Many?
A more important fnding, however, may be that looking at a sample of human
cultures studied pretty much across a slice of time and then attempting to
extrapolate from them proves that this method is highly questionable due to
the problem of cultural difusion. Indeed, in the early history of anthropol-
ogy, several schools of thought claimed that humans were basically uninven-
tive and that important technological advances had occurred only once and
thereafter moved to other areas of the world either through cultural difusion
or migration. Tese include the German Kulturkreis school, which held that
inventions spread via migration; the American cultural area school, which
emphasized difusion; and, the most extreme, the pan-Egyptian or heliolithic
theory, which asserted that all cultural advances, especially modern inven-
tions, came from Egypt, a perspective championed by G. Eliot Smith and,
later, his student William James Perry.
56
Tese schools emerged, in part, as a
reaction to early cultural evolutionism that emphasized fxed stages through
which all cultures must develop. So, while these schools of thought have
largely faded away, the ideas they promoted continue to infuence American
anthropology, in particular, through attention to individual cultural histories
and through lingering notions of culture areas, as manifested, for example,
in the sampling for the SCCS.
While there is little evidence to suggest that the Aztec or Inca civilizations
were infuenced by Egyptian, Chinese, or Roman civilization (excepting a
few contested theories about the lost tribes of Israel), the question remains
whether we can reasonably trace modern radio astronomy back to the ancient
Greeks or perhaps even to earlier civilizations of the Middle East. Does SETI
result from one cultural tradition or many?
55. A search of the eHRAF (electronic Human Relations Area Files), an online database of 230 (as
of 13 May 2011) societies, yielded results similar to those with the SCCS. None of the societ-
ies in the eHRAF had independently developed radio astronomy, and radio telescopes were
associated with only three of the societies in the sample.
56. For reviews of these perspectives, see, H. R. Hays, From Ape to Angel: An Informal History of
Social Anthropology (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958); A. de Waal Malejt, Images of Man: A
History of Anthropological Thought (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974); M. Harris, The Rise of
Anthropological Theory (New York: Thomas Crowell Company, 1968).
223
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Political scientist David Wilkinson has argued that an economic and mili-
tary integration of Egypt and Mesopotamia around 3500 BP resulted in what
he terms the Central Civilization.
57
According to Wilkinson, this civilization
expanded over the next several millennia to include the entire Middle East and
Europe. Finally, via European expansion, Central Civilization came to include
the Americas, much of Africa, China, and Japan. Hence, our advanced tech-
nology, including that used in SETI, developed originally in this polycultural
Central Civilization rather than in later cultures, societies, or empires.
Summary and Conclusions
Estimating any of the values for variables in the Drake Equation involves
a lot of guesswork, although our knowledge of R* and, especially, f
p
has
increased dramatically in recent years. We may soon be able to estimate n
e

on a more empirical and less speculative basis. Tere is general agreement
that the fraction of habitable planets that develop life should be very high.
However, the fraction of planets that develop intelligent life and the fraction
of those that develop both the means and the will to communicate across
space may remain unknown and unknowable by humans. In the meantime,
however, we can determine exactly what we are talking about and looking
for. Te question what is life? has been extensively discussed.
58
Numerous
authors have also discussed what we mean by intelligence.
59
As noted above,
the general mode of thought when considering extraterrestrial intelligence
is anthropomorphismwe imagine that aliens will be like us. Additionally,
the evolution of intelligence is often seen as inevitable or, at least, as the
endpoint of progressive evolution. In other words, once multicellular life
evolves, intelligence is on its way. Discussion of intelligent dinosaurswho
might still be here except for a random asteroid or comet hitting Earth some
65 million years agorefects this progressive notion of evolution. However,
as Richard Byrne points out, the assumption that our descent was linear and
progressive, that when we studied a lemur or monkey we were seeing in a
57. D. Wilkinson, Central Civilization, Comparative Civilizations Review 17 (1987): 3159.
58. David J. Darling, Life Everywhere: The Maverick Science of Astrobiology (New York, NY: Basic
Books, 2001).
59. Casti, Paradigms Lost; Darling, Life Everywhere; Iosif S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan, Intelligent
Life in the Universe (San Francisco: Holden-Day, Inc., 1966).
224
Biocultural Prerequisites for the Development of Interstellar Communication
direct way what our ancestors were like, is just plain wrong.
60
All other
modern animals have evolved for exactly as long as we have, and yet, after
all this evolution, only one species has developed the sort of intelligence that
has led to the technology and the interest to seek communications with other
species in the universe.
61
Tese conclusions do not lend much support to the
proposition that the development of our kind of intelligence is inevitable, let
alone common, once life appears.
As for f
c
, the fraction of intelligent civilizations able and willing to com-
municate, the exercise reported above using a sample of human societies
culled from the anthropological record also does not support high estimates.
Robin Dunbar reported a strong relationship in primates between the neo-
cortex ratio (defned as the volume of the neocortex divided by that of the
remainder of the brain) and group size.
62
A regression equation, using a ratio
of group size to neocortex, permits estimation of group size for species for
which we know only the former. In the case of humans, the estimate is about
150.
63
As Dunbar points out, group size refers to the network of individuals
who know each other and have strong afliative relationships, who interact
with one another frequently, and who maintain some type of spatial coher-
ence over time. Te ethnographic record supports group sizes of 125200 in
recent and contemporary human societies. Finally, Dunbar notes that there
are two main determinants of group size. First, living in groups provides two
important benefts: defense against predators and enhanced ability to defend
resources. Tese benefts act in opposition to the costs of group living, which
include the need for greater food resources, sometimes involving energetically
costly travel (and possible predation), and the need to devote more time and
energy to social interaction in the prevention of group conficts. Models of
maximum group size based on only three variables (mean annual temperature,
mean annual rainfall, and rainfall seasonality) among chimpanzees, geladas,
and baboons are surprisingly robust.
64
Dunbar notes that mean group
size is, of course, a rough measure of social complexity.
65
As it turns out, an
60. R. W. Byrne, Social and Technical Forms of Primate Intelligence, in Tree of Origin: What
Primate Behavior Can Tell Us about Human Social Evolution, ed. Frans B. M. de Waal
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 145172, esp. pp. 147148.
61. Byrne, Social and Technical Forms of Primate Intelligence, p. 148.
62. Robin I. M. Dunbar, Brains on Two Legs: Group Size and the Evolution of Intelligence, in de
Waal, ed., Tree of Origin, pp. 173191.
63. Dunbar, Brains on Two Legs, in de Waal, ed., Tree of Origin, p. 181.
64. Dunbar, Brains on Two Legs, in de Waal, ed., Tree of Origin, p. 186.
65. Dunbar, Brains on Two Legs, in de Waal, ed., Tree of Origin, p. 179.
225
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
excellent way to measure cultural complexity in human societies is simply
to use the size of the largest settlement in the society, rather than to scale
societies in terms of several parameters, such as in the Murdock and Provost
index discussed above.
66
So even if intelligent and technologically capable life develops, environ-
mental parameters constrain the likelihood that societies composed of such
beings will become sufciently complex to support advanced technologies.
We do not presently know if other Earth-like planets exist or, if they do, what
sort of limiting environmental conditions may exist on them. If we apply
the Principle of Mediocrity, analyses such as those by Diamond suggest that
such societies will develop only rarely.
67
I have argued here that such a culture
developed on Earth only once.
66. Murdock and Provost, Measurement of Cultural Complexity, passim. To be precise, the base-10
logarithm of the size of the largest settlement is used rather than the population number itself.
This serves to reduce excessive variance caused by curvilinearity, thus increasing correlations
with other linear variables. See also E. Bowden, Standardization of an Index of Sociocultural
Development for Precivilized Societies, American Anthropologist 74 (1972): 11221132;
R. Naroll and W. T. Divale, Natural Selection in Cultural Evolution: Warfare Versus Peaceful
Diffusion, American Ethnologist 4 (1976): 97128; and Chick, Cultural Complexity, passim.
67. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, passim.
226
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ethology, Ethnology, and
Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Dominique Lestel
Te Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) raises profound philo-
sophical questions that demand serious discussion. Our attempts to establish
contact with alien civilizations compel us, for example, to defne exactly
what we mean by communication. In the past, anthropologists have catego-
rized contacts with new cultures as either ethnological or ethological. In this
chapter I will argue that interactions with ETIs will constitute a third type
of contact since they will be located at the intersection of ethnology on the
one hand and ethology on the other. Because humans have had no experi-
ence with this type of contact, communicating with extraterrestrials will pose
complex new challenges.
Communicating with Extraterrestrial Civilizations
Two major errors must be avoided when one thinks about extraterrestrial
civilizations. Te frst error, representing a solely ethological approach, is to
consider such a task as either purely physical (the search for and analysis
of extraterrestrial signals) or purely biological (the identifcation of a non-
human species and the establishment of communication with it). Te second
error is to consider such a task as exclusively ethnological, requiring only that
two cultures (a human culture and an extraterrestrial culture) be allowed to
establish meaningful contact in the ways we usually observe between two
humancultures.
Indeed, to identify and meet an extraterrestrial civilization is a particularly
difcult task precisely because it is both ethological and ethnological. We
already know how to establish contact with nonhuman animals on Earth, but
we have never communicated with agents with whom we share no history
at all, not even a phylogenetic one. How can communication be established
between two groups of living beings who 1) have had independent biological
227
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
evolutions, 2) have had independent cultural histories, and 3) have never
previously interacted with one another? To accomplish this taskone with-
out any precedent in the history of humankindwe can take inspiration
from ethology to conceptualize contact between diferent biological species and
inspiration from ethnology to conceptualize contact between diferent cultures.
Ethology of Communicating with Extraterrestrials
On Earth, humans share genes with all other living beings. Human history
intertwines with that of every other living being, including plants. Humans
are also genetically similar to some other animals. For example, they share
around 99 percent of their genes with chimpanzees.
1
Humans also share
more than 50 percent of their genes with some plants, such as carrots. With
an extraterrestrial civilization, the situation would undoubtedly be diferent.
One thing is nevertheless (almost) sure: if extraterrestrials are living beings,
they will have undergone a process of natural evolution. Up to now, all living
beings we know of have been designed in such a way. Te almost is, how-
ever, not at all trivial. Indeed, the extraterrestrials that humans may come
into contact with could be artifcial creatures that have become (or have not
become) autonomous agents. Artifcial agents, even though built by other
living beings, could difer radically from creatures that resulted only or mainly
from natural evolution.
2
Even in that situation, where contact is made with artifcial intelligence
created by a naturally evolved alien species, the central features of the extra-
terrestrial mind that have been shaped by an evolutionary process will be
refected in the design or the uses of these artifacts. It seems likely that extra-
terrestrial natural evolution has occurred through selection involving prey/
predator relationships, social deception, and instrumental manipulation of the
environment.
3
Tat last pointthat intelligent extraterrestrials will be capable
of manipulating their environmentcan be assumed for the purposes of this
discussion, because if we are able to communicate with extraterrestrials, it
1. M. C. King and A. C. Wilson, Evolution at Two Levels in Humans and Chimpanzees, Science
188, no. 4184 (1975): 107116.
2. D. Lestel, Metaphors of Complexity: Language and Cognitive Resources of Articial Life,
Social Science Information 35, no. 3 (1996): 511540.
3. For a detailed discussion of nonhuman social abilities from an evolutionary perspective, see
N. Emery and N. Clayton, Comparative Social Cognition, Annual Review of Psychology 60
(2009): 87113.
228
Ethology, Ethnology, and Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
will be precisely because they already have a sophisticated technology. In any
case, humans need to be cautious. Tey need to be perceived neither as nave
prey nor as threatening predatorsespecially if they try to portray themselves
as altruistic creatures.
A species that goes beyond a certain point of social complexity necessarily
develops a political society. For example, such a process has been observed in spe-
cies as biologically diverse as chimpanzees, dolphins, and ravens.
4
In other words,
extraterrestrials will certainly be divided about numerous problems, including the
kind of relationships they should have with creatures living on Earth.
Tis evolutionary background helps to explain why communication with
extraterrestrials will be likely to take a special form. Paradoxically, it could
be equally important not to make contact with extraterrestrials. All com-
munication with them will necessarily involve a dual message,and we need
to take that into account in order to appreciate it: any contact conveys both
what we tell (which is not necessarily what we wish to tell) and that we exist
to tell it. In other words, every frst communication with extraterrestrials
is both a semantic and an existential exchange. Tis is why we should think
about designing a message that gives no clues to Earths location. Similarly,
an extraterrestrial message could have such a structure.
Ethnology and Ethology of Communicating
with Extraterrestrials
We can be sure that contacts with extraterrestrial cultures will be entirely
diferent from everything we already know and maybe from everything we
have anticipated to date. Tus, an ethological model must be adopted with
caution. It will help to illuminate only one dimension of what might occur.
Indeed, we can reasonably assume that such a contact will need to be thought
of as occurring at the intersection of ethnology and ethology, a location with
which humans have thus far had no experience. Basically, three kinds of
contact can be distinguished:
4. Christopher Boehm, Segmentary Warfare and the Management of Conict: Comparison
of East African Chimpanzees and Patrilineal-Patrilocal Humans, in Coalitions and Alliances
in Humans and Other Animals, ed. A. Harcourt and Frans B. M. de Waal (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992), pp. 137173; Janet Mann et al., eds., Cetacean Societies: Field
Studies of Dolphins and Whales (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); and Bernd
Heinrich, Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds (New York: Cliff
Street Books, 1999).
229
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Table 15.1. Three Possible Types of Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Types of
Contact
Types of Groups
Making Contact
Examples
I. Ethnological Contact between cultures that
are different from one another
but are homogeneous together
(both were human cultures)
Contact between human culture
and human culture (e.g., Spanish
and Aztec cultures)
II. Ethological Contact between human cultures
and animal societies
Contacts between a human
culture and a noncultural
society (e.g., an ant colony) or a
primitively cultural society (e.g.,
a community of chimpanzees)
III. Etho-
ethnological
Contact between two hetero-
geneous advanced cultural
societies
Contact between human cultures
and extraterrestrial cultures
Te terrestrial history of contacts with foreign cultures shows that the
major problem during contact between two human cultures is frequently a
problem of perception rather than one of communication, strictly speaking.
One can translate discourses from one language into another, but understand-
ing what is really being said is always a much more difcult task.
One of the main challenges of human/extraterrestrial contact could occur
at the interface between culture, meaning, and physiological senses. To under-
stand what is at stake, it is useful to refer back to Jakob von Uexklls approach
to animal Umwelten. At the beginning of the 20th century, von Uexkll
showed that animals of diferent species relate diferently to the same environ-
ment because of the radical variations among the physiological senses with
which they perceive their own world.
5
Bees, for example, are sensitive to
infrared wavelengths of light that humans cannot perceive and will therefore
not inhabit the same environment in the way that humans would. A similar
problem could arise with extraterrestrials, whose physiological senses might
turn out to be quite diferent from those of humans.
Paradoxically, communication with such extraterrestrials might be easier
precisely because it would be not a proximal communication but a distal
5. Jakob von Uexkll, A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of
Invisible Worlds, in Instinctive Behavior: The Development of a Modern Concept, ed. and
trans. Claire H. Schiller (New York: International Universities Press, 1957), pp. 580. For a full
bibliography and a critical contemporary discussion of von Uexkll, see Kaveli Kull, Jakob von
Uexkll: An Introduction, Semiotica 134, nos. 14 (2001): 159.
230
Ethology, Ethnology, and Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
one. Communication between humans and extraterrestrials (whatever they
are) will necessarily need an abstract artifcial mediation, such as a highly
elaborated code.
6
Even if it requires a code that will be a very complex one
for us, such a communication would be much less complex than if it were a
multimodal, contiguous, proximal, physical exchange.
Basically, we must remain open to all possibilities. Te challenge is not to
anticipate the most likely possibility but rather to describe exhaustively all
of the potential situations that could occur and to fnd ways to address each
one. In particular, humans must be ready to face very disturbing situations.
For example, humans may face a scenario in which they will be unable to
conclude whether or not extraterrestrials exist, being unable to make a rational
decision about such a weighty issue.
Tis prospect raises a truly fundamental question: do humans have the
cognitive, epistemic, technological, and cultural abilities that will enable
them to establish communication with extraterrestrials? From an evolution-
ary point of view, there is no reason that we should be capable of dealing
with such a circumstance. We have had no need to develop such a useless
ability! Terefore, the more pertinent question may be this: in the attempt
to communicate with extraterrestrials, could Homo sapiens use technological
and cultural capabilities to compensate for a lack of innate power?
Universal Interlocutors? Language as a Metaphor
for Communication with Extraterrestrials
Are we really justifed in saying that humans are universal interlocutors?
Tis is precisely what numerous contemporary linguists do when they assert
the existence of a great divide between human language, which can describe
everything, and animal communications, which are at best able to refer only
to very particular aspects of the world, such as the so-called bee dance lan-
guage.
7
But is this distinction true? First of all, one could wonder whether
language is actually able to describe everything. Tis frst problem is simply
a logical one, not even an empirical problem. What could be the meaning
6. For a discussion about the Turing Test in this perspective, see D. Lestel, Metaphors of
Complexity, Social Sciences Information 35, no. 3 (1996): 511540.
7. See, for example, the debate between French linguist Emile Benveniste and Austrian ethologist
Karl von Frisch during the 1950s: Emile Benveniste, Animal Communication and Human
Language: The Language of the Bees, Diogenes 1, no. 1 (1953): 17; and Karl von Frisch and
Emile Benveniste, Letters to the Editor, Diogenes 2, no. 7 (1954): 106109.
231
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
of such a statement? How could language demonstrate that it is capable of
representing everything? In other words, if language cannot describe some
topic, would language be able to show that failure? Tis seems doubtful. On
the contrary, language users may frmly believe that language allows them to
talk about everything because they have no access to what language cannot
talk about.
8
We are justifed in doubting the ability of language to display its
limits and weaknesses. Our belief that language is able to talk about every-
thing could in reality refect an epistemic and logical weakness of language,
and not one of its major strengths. Perhaps the main characteristic of lan-
guage is not that it can describe everything, but rather that it possesses the
bizarre ability to describe anything. Such an ability could seriously handicap
any attempt to communicate with living beings whom we assume to be very
diferent not only from every other living being we have known so far but
also from everything that humans have encountered up to now. Te point is
not that language production itself is insane but that human language has
the surprising ability to talk convincingly about anything (including the
most absurd things) without meeting any serious objections to its referential
credentials, either from the speakers or from the hearers.
In contrast to the above line of reasoning, which raises concerns about
easy communication with extraterrestrials on theoretical grounds, there are
also empirical reasons to be skeptical about easy communication. Humans
struggle to decipher nonhuman animal communications, although these are
supposed to be very primitive in comparison with human languages. On this
point, the feld of ethology can ofer a major lesson: even with creatures that
are regarded as much less complex than humans, we cannot accurately say
whether we could know when we fnally have a good description of a non-
human animal communication system.
Human scientists are very bad at making sense of nonhuman commu-
nicative systems, even when these are considered primitive. Primatologists
have shown how easy it is to deceive ourselves about that point.
9
Tey say
that humans miss the true complexity of great ape communication systems
because we refuse a priori to attribute to these systems the complexity required
for them to be fully understood, and not because great apes are epistemi-
cally or cognitively beyond our power of understanding. Tis idea is deeply
8. But keep in mind that the extreme difculty could be as challenging to deal with as the impos-
sibility would be. Remember that even some human scripts still wait to be deciphered.
9. E. S. Savage-Rumbaugh et al., Language Perceived: Paniscus Branches Out, in Great Ape
Societies, ed. W. McGrew, L. Marchant, and T. Nishida (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), pp. 173184.
232
Ethology, Ethnology, and Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
troubling because it shows that an epistemic step is also always an ethical one.
It also shows that, from an ethical or moral point of view, we could have good
reasons not to communicate with extraterrestrials.
Our materialist concerns are likely to be as difcult as our epistemic con-
cerns: in which ways are we really ready to invest resources (of money, time,
energy, education, research, etc.) into methods for deciphering the meaning
of messages that we may or may not receive? Tis is a serious question. Te
material and psychological cost of such an investigation could be so high that
it might dissuade anyone from being involved in it. A question as seemingly
simple as how long a message should be could lead to very deep difculties.
Charles Hartshorne, for example, has already shown that the time scale of
communication is a big issue when comparing human communication with
bird communication.
10
Humans may need to send extraterrestrials fractal
messages, repeated at multiple time scales ranging from the nanosecond to
the century; similarly, humans may need to write programs that could read
messages received from extraterrestrials in this way.
Philosophical Openness
Up to now, there has been no attempt at purely abstract cultural contact with
another intelligent species or even with an isolated group of humans. When
two humans communicate by means of a device such as e-mail, they always
already have had a physical contact with another human. All ethnological
and ethological contacts have been conducted through actual rather than
virtual meetings. Te diference between communicating only via e-mail and
communicating occasionally via e-mail is enormous.
Te central issue in extraterrestrial/human communication concerns the
nature of communication itself. In other words, should communication with
extraterrestrials be considered a true communication, or should it be taken as
a metaphor? Te metaphor of communication may not help us to under-
stand what is actually at stake. Every contact with extraterrestrials will be, for
example, an existential experience. One of the reasons, as has already been
explained, is that such a contact will establish the existence of the other. No
matter how prepared we may be to believe that extraterrestrial civilizations
do exist, to be in contact with one of them will be a genuine shockand the
word is far too weak to express what will happen.
10. Charles Hartshorne, Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).
233
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
It is likely that the contact with extraterrestrials will lead to a very deep
existential crisis for humans. Humans could be confronted with their inability
to answer questions of enormous importance to them. First, to become aware
of such cognitive and epistemic limits, and second, to accept these limits may
seriously test humans. Indeed, up to now, every epistemological crisis humans
have faced has led them to alter their conception of the world. Te next
epistemological crisis, a crisis precipitated by contact with extraterrestrials,
could be very diferent. Humans may come to understand that there exists in
the universe a set of phenomena that they will never be able to know because
they are not clever enough.
Conclusion
Communication with extraterrestrials through the SETI project will not
look like any known communications, either with other humans or with
nonhuman animals. Such a communication will be not only ethological and
ethnological; it will also be uniquely abstract. How could such a commu-
nication be possible? Te question remains open. Western linguists have
proposed that language is a universal medium, able to tell everything and
to be efectively used in all situations; but they have neither empirical facts
nor sound theoretical arguments to support that belief. On the other hand,
humans also could have very good reasonspolitical, psychological, and
metaphysical reasonsto avoid all possibilities of establishing contact with
an extraterrestrial civilization.
234
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Constraints on Message
Construction for
Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence
William H. Edmondson
Introduction
Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI) must address four
issues: detectability; communications protocols; message designmy focus
here; and long-term social context, stability, and resourcing.
1
I will here
contextualize CETI within eforts focused more generally on the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), as envisaged by Earthlings. All of this
is done in the context set by the preceding chapters as they investigate the
theme of this volume.
Anthropologists and archaeologists necessarily make assumptions in rela-
tion to essential properties of human beingse.g., some physical/biological
processes are taken for granted. Setting aside any general doubts about the
pitfalls of anthropomorphism, I will note two areas of concern. One, dis-
cussed by other contributors to this volume, is the risk of getting it wrong.
2

Te other is the difculty we humans have in studying nonhuman terrestrial
species, such as dolphins or bonobos, that are signifcant to our enquiry by
virtue of their demonstrated intelligence, communicative ability, and social
1. On detectability, see W. H. Edmondson and I. R. Stevens, The Utilization of Pulsars as SETI
Beacons, International Journal of Astrobiology 2, no. 4 (2003): 231271; on communica-
tions protocols, see G. Seth Shostak, ed., Progress in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, ASP
Conference Series, vol. 74 (San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacic, 1995).
2. John W. Traphagan, Anthropology at a Distance: SETI and the Production of Knowledge in the
Encounter with an Extraterrestrial Other, chapter 8 in this volume; Paul K. Wason, Inferring
Intelligence: Prehistoric and Extraterrestrial, chapter 7 in this volume.
235
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
organization, or perhaps as philosophical challenges.
3
All of which is to say
that while we can attempt some discussion, or even analysis, of what an ETI
might be like, we must remain aware of our fundamental constraints. We
can explore those constraints, but we must recognize themwe cannot do
anthropology here on Earth over the telephone, so why should we expect
to do it well over the ether and with another species in an environment we
cannot experience?
4
Tese issues can be addressed in relation to some specifcs,
the sort of concerns any anthropologist or archaeologist has with respect to
assumptions about the objects of a study. So we must begin by considering
these assumptions.
What is necessary in any communication scenario involving ETI, and
what limits must be put on our conceptions of possible messages? When
answering these questions, we will consider work in cognitive science along
with archaeological and historical examples that include rock art, tool-
making, and a 15th-century codex. It is not assumed that systems of expla-
nation are the same as ours, merely that what is explained or known must
be about the same universeand the term universe covers physical aspects
of the universe as well as cognitive and behavioral aspects of beings. It is
assumed that any ETI will be an embodied intelligencea being with a
brain to control its actuators and to monitor its environment using sensors
to record external stimuli such as atmospheric pressure, acoustic pressure,
and electromagnetic radiation.
AssumptionsI
Physics and Biophysics: We can assume that the physics of the universe is know-
able locally. We monitor our local environment and interact with it to make
remote observations of other parts of the universe. Plausibly, beings on other
planets can do the same. Further, we can assume that the sensory biophysics
of any ETI is functionally equivalent to ours. Beings will be able to sense the
worldor portions of the spectral data availablebecause the physics and
chemistry of the universe are uniform. But it is not claimed, for example, that
3. For related discussions, see Dominique Lestel, Ethology, Ethnology, and Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, chapter 14 in this volume; and John W. Traphagan, Culture and
Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, chapter 10 in this volume.
4. Ben Finney and Jerry Bentley, A Tale of Two Analogues: Learning at a Distance from
the Ancient Greeks and Maya and the Problem of Deciphering Extraterrestrial Radio
Transmissions, chapter 4 in this volume.
236
Constraints on Message Construction for Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
the visual system of an ETI would map in detail onto ours in terms of, say,
comparable spectral sensitivities of retinal cells or ficker/fusion performance
or acuity and likewise, mutatis mutandis, for audition, touch, taste, or smell.
All this, in my view, can be taken uncontroversially as established. More
obscurely, perhaps, but still working with notions of universality in the physi-
cal world, it is plausible to assume that the biochemistry we know about on
Earth is essentially universal (alternatives have been explored theoretically).
5

So-called weird life is best left to science fction.
Te signifcance of these observations for CETI is considerable, and in
particular it is arguable that what we call audition will not be shared in
any interesting sense by an ETI. Te speed of sound on any planet will be
determined by its atmospheric density, geologic composition, temperature,
and other local factors. Te range of acoustic frequencies to which an organ-
ism is sensitive is not predictable on physical grounds. Consider the range
exploited on Earth: human audition has a restricted range; other organisms
are sensitive to frequencies outside our hearing range and it took some
time for this to be recognized. Further, creatures dwelling in the oceans use
acoustic information and signaling, but the medium is very diferent and
so, we must imagine, is their sound world. By contrast the electromagnetic
spectrum has relatively unambiguous ranges for heat, vision, and so forth
because the physics of the world (and our Sun) determines what is heat and
what is light (in terms of, say, photochemical reactions, vibrational motion
of atoms, liquid/solid/vapor transitions, or the disruption of and damage
to complex cellular assemblages of materials and molecules). Vision as we
know it terrestrially covers a broader range of the spectrum than is covered
by human vision, but not much broader. We might refect on the fact that
eyes tend to be recognizable as such in a huge range of species, and they
work in much the same way. Of course, the assumption here is that our local
experience of stellar radiation is more or less universal in the sense that the
primary source of electromagnetic radiation is our star, and it makes sense
to assume sensory evolution in the context of that source, and such sources
are widely encountered in the universe. To be sure, atmospheric fltering is
requiredif too much ultraviolet reaches Earths surface, the biochemical
balance is seriously disrupted.
5. Alternative theories are explored by J. A Baross et al. in National Research Council, The Limits
of Organic Life in Planetary Systems (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2007), avail-
able at http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11919.
237
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
ImplicationsI
If the reader accepts these assumptions, then our frst constraint on possible
messages is simple: dont think of sound worlds or music or speech as
the domains, vehicles, or contents of ETI messages. Regardless of semiotic
concerns (see below), the accessibility of acoustic messaging must remain
doubtful. Furthermore, there will be intended and unintended aspects of
performance, which elaborate the difculties of using sound. In my view
avoidance of the sound world need not be controversial.
On the other hand, vision and the use of images would appear to be at
least plausible. Although spectral details cannot be considered universal, the
physical arrangement of objects on a habitable planets surface will be shaped
in part by gravity (the notion of a horizon might well be universal) and thus
multispectral images might plausibly be considered worthwhile for messages.
More generally, the implications for considering SETI/CETI as some sort
of anthropological challenge need teasing out. We will return to this below.
AssumptionsII
In this section we will consider four factorscognition, distributed cog-
nition, symbols, and intentionsbefore looking in detail at some of their
implications.
Cognition: I assume that some general cognitive principles have univer-
sal applicability, and also that some aspects of cognitive functioning (e.g.,
intentionality, distributed cognition, and contextualization) are necessary
and thus universal corollaries of intelligent behavior. Tis view is not widely
shared and may be considered controversial. Such cognitive principles are
not species-specifc and express a broad notion of the functionality of the
brain (any brainnote that we understand how the heart works and what
the heart is for in just such a general way).
6
Te main idea is simply that the
brain provides the means whereby the temporal dimension of experience
and behavior is mapped into and out of cognitive entities (memories, plans,
thoughts, intentions, desires, beliefs, etc.) that may be about such temporal
structures without being temporal in the same sense. My notion of boiling an
egg does not itself bubble along for four minutes; it is about duration without
6. W. H. Edmondson, General Cognitive Principles: The Structure of Behaviour and the Sequential
Imperative, International Journal of Mind, Brain and Cognition 1, no. 1 (2010): 740, available
at http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~whe/GCPSOBSI.pdf.
238
Constraints on Message Construction for Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
having duration (it endures, which is diferent). Likewise, my notion of the
structure of a sentence, with subject and predicate arranged as in English,
does not itself have that same sequential structure; it is about that structure.
Sequentiality is required psychophysically to penetrate the corporeal bound-
ary: atemporal cognitive entities must be sequenced to be externalized; per-
ception requires desequencing in order to internalize. (Te visual system of
organisms imposes sequentiality through saccades and/or head movements.)
I refer to this psychophysical requirement as the sequential imperative,
and it is at the core of any functional specifcation of any brain, including, I
believe, the brains of ETIs. We will consider the implications of this require-
ment later in this chapter.
Distributed cognition: While cognitive activity is often represented as iso-
lated and occurring exclusively within the head, the core concept of distrib-
uted cognition as set out by Edwin Hutchins is that brains are not completely
isolated cognizers processing concepts in relation to sensory data; rather, it
is more accurate to think of cognition as spread out in space and time and
among other cognizers.
7
Humans are good at distributing cognition over
space: we leave Post-it notes all over our ofces, and we use diaries and address
books as cognitive extensions. We also distribute cognition over people: in
power-station control rooms or when performing discrete tasks in diferent
locations during the operation of complex equipment, such as a naval vessel,
humans rely on situational awareness in order to coordinate cognition within
the group. Cognition can also be distributed over time, both within individu-
als (which Hutchins does not discuss) and across individuals. It has recently
been argued that afect is similarly distributed
8
and that cognition and afect
can be projected (an act refecting intentionality).
9
Solving a problem or developing a specifc tool can take time and repeated
cognitive application. Sometimes success depends on interaction between
sequential cognizers, who recognize the cognitive activity of a predecessor and
engage it at a temporal distance. David de Lon ofers an interesting illustra-
tion of this phenomenon.
10
Te development of the fring mechanism for a
rife can be tracked through various instantiations, each of which is assumed
7. E. Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996).
8. W. H. Edmondson, General Cognitive Principles, pp. 740.
9. W. H. Edmondson and R. Beale, Projected CognitionExtending Distributed Cognition for the
Study of Human Interaction with Computers, Interacting with Computers 20 (2008): 128140.
10. D. de Lon, Building Thought into Things, in Third European Conference on Cognitive
Science, ed. S. Bagnara (Rome: Istituto di Psicologia del Consiglio Nazionale della Ricerche,
1999), pp. 3747.
239
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
to have been read by appropriately skilled craftsmen producing the next
iteration/interpretation of the solution to the problem. Te craftsmen in each
generation are, in a sense, doing some very local cognitive archaeology, but
they respond to their interpretation of what they fnd by producing a new
interpretation that they then cast in the form of a new solutionbuilt on,
or extending, the previous solution in a process that may cover a couple of
hundred years. Tis aspect of cognition is likely to be familiar to anthropolo-
gists and archaeologists, and some of its implications are addressed below.
Symbols: When sequence is not constrained by physical events, tool use,
or deployment of physiology, it is semiotically free and thus available to carry
symbolic meaning as desired. Te arbitrariness of meaning associated with
physical behavior is problematic for CETI because the behavior alone is
simply not informative. Also, the use of symbol systems requires both cultural
and situational contextualization; we must be able to consider the symbol
usage alongside other behavior, the situations in which all these behaviors
take place, and the circumstances of both learning and cultural transmission.
Te background knowledge and situational context are not part of the symbol
system in any narrow sense, however, and thus are unavailable to an ETI. As
a consequence, the conditions for ETI to learn a human language are not
in place. So symbol systems and languages look implausible as components
or goals in any CETI attempt. Te fact that on Earth we can currently fnd
approximately 7,000 spoken and signed languages suggests that the arbi-
trariness is not a trivial obstacleespecially when we recognize why that
arbitrariness exists.
11
Te approach taken here is at odds with more widely
accepted message models. We can suppose that an ETI might well be aware
of the issues and principles involved, and its possible that alien semioticians
and cognitive scientists will have reached similar conclusions.
Intentions: In human discourse the existence and comprehensibility of
intentionality are presumedcommunication fails if intentions are not clear.
It is reasonable to assume that an ETI interested in communication with other
ETIs will endeavor to behave with some communicative intentions, paying
explicit attention to the conditions that inform the communication. Once
detected, ETI may attempt to specify the means for a response, to commence
11. C. F. Hockett, The Problem of Universals in Language, in Universals of Language, ed.
Joseph H. Greenberg, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1965). See also C. F. Hockett,
Linguistic Elements and Their Relations, Language 37 (1961): 2953. The approach taken
here is at odds with more widely accepted message models. For a study that exemplies the
message model approach, see M. D. Hauser, The Evolution of Communication (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1997).
240
Constraints on Message Construction for Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
a dialogue rather than merely post a notice, to display situational awareness,
and so on. Tis does not mean that ETI will presume a drive to linguistic
communication or the posing/solving of interstellar sudoku puzzles.
ImplicationsII
Te sequential imperative will be universal, and behaviors dependent on cul-
turally determined serial organization of behavior will therefore be so arbitrary
as to be incomprehensiblethere will be no basis for contextualization. By
contrast, where sequentialization is determined physically, it is recognizable
and its lack of arbitrariness is readable as such. Tis observation may prove
useful in the design of messages.
Semiosisthe attribution of meaning to artifacts and the systematic orga-
nization of artifacts (language)is culturally constrained, as semioticians
have often demonstrated. While the fact of semiosis is plausibly universal,
the means of expression and much of the content are irrevocably parochial.
Systems through which humans explain the universe (e.g., our theories in
mathematics and physics) are local, although the phenomena to be explained
(e.g., properties in the light of distant stars observed in our local star that can
be reproduced in our laboratories) are universal. We might therefore assume
that an ETIs understanding of cognition and semiosis means that they wont
attempt linguistic communication but will choose other ways to contact us.
I believe that cognition can be distributed over species as well.
12
If the
physics of the universe determines certain properties of tools and artifacts
on our planet, then surely our deliberations about such items might match
those of other species on other planets. Te deployment of levers would be a
clear example, as would the design of wheels for particular terrains. In order
to apprehend or interpret the shapes of such items in the world of an ETI,
we should exploit the sense of sharing that is fundamental to distributed
cognition. Tis is not a hard constraint but goes beyond mere possibility.
We might also ponder that an ETI, as much as we Earthlings, will refect on
the fact that we both know that we both know we share a problemhow to
communicate.
Consider again, therefore, the desirability of establishing symbolic/lin-
guistic communication with ETI. It is helpful to review some parallels from
human existence that pose problems for us today. One of these is rock art,
which consists of patterns or shapes cut into rock many thousands of years
12. W. H. Edmondson, General Cognitive Principles, pp. 740.
241
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Figure 15.1. An example of Northumbrian Rock Art.
Three-dimensional scan produced by M. Lobb and H.
Moulden (IBM VISTA/University of Birmingham), used by
permission and provided courtesy of V. Gaffney.
ago. Such ancient stone carvings can be found in
many countries, and the example in Figure 15.1 is
from Doddington Moor, Northumbria, England.
We can say little, if anything, about what these pat-
terns signify, why they were cut into rocks, or who
created them. For all intents and purposes, they
might have been made by aliens.
13
Unless we fnd a
readable exegesis of them produced at the time they
were made, we will never be able to say with certainty
what the patterns mean.
Te Voynich manuscript ofers another parallel
that may be helpful in understanding the difcul-
ties with symbolic CETI. Tis 240-page vellum
codex probably dates from the early 15th century
and remains undeciphered despite many eforts
to identify the script.
14
Whether or not the writ-
ing (see Figure 15.2) is in fact genuinely linguistic
is still unclear; there are no convincing reasons to
suppose the document is not a hoax. Intriguingly,
one is under the impression that one can say some
things about its context and possible contentthe
proposed date and format of the manuscript sug-
gest the ravings of a secretive alchemist, but even the
illustrations are not readily interpretable.
Te Voynich manuscript illustrates how linguistic, or serial, organi-
zation of symbols can present an intractable problem for interpretation
because of their arbitrariness and semiotic opacity. It would be unfortu-
nate and counterproductive if CETI were to become some sort of galactic
encryption/decipherment exercise or challenge (or even game? how would
13. One need only think of books by Immanuel Velikovsky or Erich von Dniken to see where that
line of thinking can end up.
14. The Voynich manuscript (Beinecke MS 408) is held in the General Collection of the Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. A digital facsimile of the entire manu-
script is available online at http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vund/Record/3519597. For just
two of many articles on this bafing artifact, see Betya Ungar-Sargon, Cracking the Voynich
Code, Tablet, 15 April 2013, available at http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/
books/129131/cracking-the-voynich-code; and Reed Johnson, The Unread: The Mystery of
the Voynich Manuscript, The New Yorker, 9 July 2013, available at http://www.newyorker.
com/online/blogs/books/2013/07/the-unread-the-mystery-of-the-voynich-manuscript.html.
242
Constraints on Message Construction for Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Figure 15.2. The Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke MS 408), fol. 9
r
, General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
243
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
we ever know?). Indeed, the situation might be even worsea signaling
system devoted to conveying arbitrary symbols could confuse would-be
interlocutors by making it difcult for them to know whether they had
accurately sorted out the protocol (content cannot be obviously distin-
guished from medium when both are essentially arbitrary). Furthermore,
ETIs intention in sending messages must be understood for messaging to
work. ETI and Earthlings both know this, and that the intention cannot
successfully be communicated.
Tese considerations lead to another constraint: CETI can be neither
linguistic nor based on any sort of symbol system. Te requirements for suc-
cessful decipherment cannot be establishedthere is no shared experience,
location, or behavior, and there is no parallel text. So what are we left with?
Message Design
We have ruled out symbols, language, and systems based on sounds. Te sig-
nifcance of the sequential imperative is that sequentially organized material
is generally unsuitable because processing sequentially organized material will
be a species-specifc activity. Additionally, a focus on concepts shared through
problem-solving endeavors (levers, wheels, etc.) exploits what we understand
from distributed cognition, and similar concerns oblige us to think carefully
about the intentions of any ETI communicating with us. In order to better
understand the content of any extraterrestrial signal sent to us, we need to
think about how we would construct a message.
I believe we should seek to transmit/receive images that contain task or
conceptual material that does not require sequential interpretation (but which
could be informative about sequencing). Furthermore, the intentionality
must take us way beyond a cosmic Hi there. We must craft a message along
the following lines: We, who look like this, are here, which looks like this,
and we know about this sort of thing, which we think is the minimum you
should be able to recognize and build on if we are to establish a dialogue of
some sort. In other words, we should expect intelligences to think altruisti-
cally, in the sense of putting themselves in the situation of the intelligence
who receives their messages. Altruism is not to be encoded in any message;
it is the frame of mind that makes communication possible at all and is thus
expressed by whatever system/message is deployed.
I propose that we transmit a three-color imageor rather several images
of our planet and its inhabitants, properties, and so on, arranged in a grid,
rather like one of those postcards that ofers several diferent images from
the city or region one is visiting. Call this component of the transmission
244
Constraints on Message Construction for Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Postcard Earth; perhaps an ETI is sending out such postcard images. As
a separate component, a monochrome diagram or diagrams that depict our
galaxy and that require no sequential interpretation could be sent in tandem
with the postcard signal.
15
Tis proposal is, of course, fanciful, but arguably
less so than sending audio fles or coded information about prime numbers.
Importantly, the selection and arrangement of the images is in part an
aesthetic matter and known to be so because there is no comprehensive ratio-
nal basis for such a selection. To be sure, one can rationally decide to show
humans at diferent ages or to show some gross diferences between species
(swimmers, fiers, walkers, climbers, etc.); but subjective value judgments
will ultimately have to be made, and this fact will be known to both parties.
Postcard Earth seems an attractive conceptto focus our minds as much
as to encourage youngsters to study science in schools. Should we take it seri-
ously? Tat we have not yet detected any signals from ETI may mean that we
are not approaching the search in the right frame of mind. Or maybe they, like
us, have yet to start systematic transmissions. Perhaps we have misunderstood
the context for CETI?
Recontextualizing CETI
Te foregoing discussion of constraints on what could constitute message
construction (form and content) says little about message protocols or other
relevant factors. Leaving those issues for others to explore, I will focus here
on the context of CETI. It can be argued that SETI should proceed on prin-
ciples unrelated to message construction.
16
Indeed, more recently it has been
argued that SETI is probably most efciently accomplished using extremely
large optical telescopes, in an extension of the search for exoplanets.
17
An
optical telescope of diameter 1,000 km could resolve an object of diameter
1 km at a distance of 100 light-years. Such a telescopic instrument (or its
equivalentfor example, a device using aperture synthesis) is just about
feasible with todays technologyalthough it will be technically challenging
and extremely costly. Figure 15.3 illustrates what such a telescope might be
15. The message/signal protocols are assumed to be unproblematic (e.g., scanning as in TV
transmission or facsimile transmission is an obvious solution to sequencing the content, pixel
by pixel, of an image).
16. Edmondson and Stevens, The Utilization of Pulsars as SETI Beacons, pp. 231271.
17. W. H. Edmondson, Targets and SETI: Shared Motivations, Life Signatures and Asymmetric
SETI, Acta Astronautica 67, nos. 1112 (2010): 14101418.
245
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Figure 15.3. As this composite image of Earth at night suggests, our planets emitted light could
serve as a biomarker for extraterrestrial intelligence. The image was assembled from data collected
by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite in April 2012 and October 2012. (NASA)
able to accomplish from perhaps as far as 100 parsecs away from us, assuming
good weather on Earth.
Te point of including this image here is simply to show that the presence
of intelligent life-forms on such a planet is readily determined passively and
from a considerable distance. Te user (human or extraterrestrial) of such a
telescope doesnt need to send or receive messages to know that it is not alone.
In other words, CETI does not need to be predicated on the assumption that
it is being used for discovery, for SETI itself.
246
Constraints on Message Construction for Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
CETI in the Context of a SETI SolutionI
An ETI, viewing the image opposite on its computer screens and knowing it
is not alone, would still face all the CETI design problems discussed earlier.
To be sure, spectroscopic analysis of the light sources on the landmasses in this
fgure would tell ETI something about our vision system and our technologies
but not enough to resolve major issues in CETI.
We can put ourselves in ETIs position and imagine what we might do after
having observed a planet with occupied landmasses. In such a situation the
Postcard Earth approach is readily appreciated as having some merit. One
small scene on the postcard could be an image such as that shown in Figure
15.3, and another could of course be our view of ETIs planet. Te successful
decoding of the postcard would be demonstrated by their recognition of a
known imagea view of their planet from Earths perspective. And, mutatis
mutandis, we would be well placed to feel confdent of message processing if
we detected and processed an image that looked like Figure 15.3.
CETI in the Context of a SETI SolutionII
Te last two issues addressed here will be the targets to be used for SETI and
the time scale of efort. Both issues serve to fesh out CETI in its new context.
Targets: Te debate within the SETI community on whether to look
everywhere for anything or to target searches for specifc reasons is ongoing,
with strongly held views on both sides. My own endeavors focus on targeted
searching.
18
However, if we assume an expanding exoplanet inventory, with
increasing resources devoted to the hunt for Earth-like planets, then the
refnement of a list of targets for SETI simply becomes a by-product of other
science. Indeed, discovery of ETI may be accidental in this scenario.
Time scale: Both message transmission and signal searching (for a mes-
sage or a beacon or a we-are-here signal of some sort) presume a consider-
able sociotechnical resolveespecially if conducted for SETI and without
certainty of ETIs existence. Commitment of signifcant resources over
extended periods of time for no immediately apparent beneft presents sig-
nifcant problems. On Earth we have evidence from large artifacts, such as
Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, that resource commitment is pos-
sible, although the benefts to the communities that created such monuments
are still debated. In passing we might note, revisiting our earlier theme, that
18. Edmondson and Stevens, The Utilization of Pulsars as SETI Beacons, pp. 231271.
247
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
these artifacts still present considerable problems for modern science. While
Stonehenge does demonstrate celestial alignments, its functionality is prob-
lematic. Te construction of the pyramids presents challenges that todays
engineers would struggle with even using current technologieswe simply
dont know how they were built. Tese colossal constructions defy archaeol-
ogy and anthropologyand they are in our backyards, so to speak, not a
hundred light-yearsaway!
But if we conjecture that CETI becomes interesting to society (ours or
ETIs) only when we detect ETI through observation of exoplanets, then
it becomes plausible to speculate that long-term human commitment can
be made to sustaining technologies for both transmission and reception
(Arecibo-scale equipment, for example, or powerful lasers coupled with opti-
cal telescopes). Te design challenge remains, and Postcard Earth is just one
of many possible solutions.
Conclusions
Te lessons from archaeology and anthropology as fltered through modern
work in cognitive science are simple. Communicating with intelligent ter-
restrial beings removed from us in time is deeply problematic. Understanding
artifacts without any social context is deeply problematiceven when we
have a good general understanding of the role of artifacts in society and in
cognition. Te recovery of the originators intentions is deeply problematic,
and without that information the interpretation of ancient artifacts is also
deeply problematic.
Te arguments presented above illustrate the theme of constraining mes-
sage design for CETI. Perhaps the biggest constraint of all is a sociotechnical
one: Wait until you fnd ETI. Te semiotic issues, the physical and bio-
physical uncertainties, the transmission protocolall these problems remain
after ETI is found. But motivation will increase immeasurably, and the con-
straints that humans now contend with will be refned, removed, or simply
accepted as CETI is engaged.
248
EPILOGUE
Mirrors of Our Assumptions
Lessons from an Arthritic Neanderthal
Douglas A. Vakoch
Astrobiologiststhose scientists studying the origins, prevalence, and dis-
tribution of life in the universeshare a common challenge with SETI sci-
entists. Tey are both limited in the amount of observational data they can
gather to test their theories. SETI researchers are separated from potential
interlocutors by the vast distances between stars. Geologists studying other
planets and moons within our solar system face a similar challenge, exploring
other worlds through the proxy of spacecraft.
Even when we can go to other worlds, the amount of information we can
gather continues to be severely restricted. Te pair of Mars Exploration Rovers
that landed on the red planet in 2004 were limited to exploring the vicinity
of their landing sites. Te rover Spirit traveled less than 5 miles before it went
silent, and Opportunity traversed just over 20 miles in its frst eight years
on Mars. Tough these distances far surpassed expectations for the vehicles,
the total area covered nevertheless amounted to a tiny fraction of the planets
surface. Consequently, conclusions built on observations at these locations
should be extrapolated to other regions only with the greatest caution.
A vivid reminder of the limitations of such local knowledge comes from
NASAs Phoenix Mars Lander, a fxed craft that in 2008 explored the North
Plains of Mars, an arctic region with unique conditions not previously exam-
ined by other landers. During the fve months that Phoenix made observa-
tions from the surface of Mars, scientists encountered unexpected challenges
in analyzing soil samples at its polar landing site, where soil clumped so readily
it was difcult to get into the ovens designed to analyze the soils chemical
composition. Based on previously available observations, there was no hint
that arctic soil on Mars would be clingy.
As we move from understanding extraterrestrial geology to comprehend-
ing extraterrestrial cultures, additional challenges will undoubtedly arise, as
noted in earlier chapters. By the nature of the instrumentation we use to
process signals during SETI, we may well be able to detect distinctly arti-
fcial signals without being able to extract any information-rich messages
249
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Figure Epilogue.1. NASAs Phoenix Mars Lander poised to deposit a soil sample into one of its ovens,
where samples were heated to determine their chemical composition. (NASA)
embedded within those signals. We could know that extraterrestrials are out
there but have no direct way of knowing much about them.
In a sense, we are faced with challenges akin to those of anthropologists who
reconstruct extinct species from fragmentary evidence. Like SETI scientists,
anthropologists are looking for evidence of other forms of intelligence; and in
the best case scenario, they have only a fraction of the observational data they
would like to have. What lessons might SETI scientists learn from them?
Reconstructing Neanderthals
Consider for a moment the challenges anthropologists faced in reconstructing
Homo neanderthalensis, frst discovered near Dsseldorf, Germany, in 1856. By
250
Mirrors of Our Assumptions
the early 20th century, it was widely held that these now-extinct hominids were
brutish in form. In 1924, for example, G. Elliot Smith described an uncouth
and repellent Neanderthal man in his book Te Evolution of Man: His short,
thick-set, and coarsely built body was carried in a half-stooping slouch upon
short, powerful, and half-fexed legs of peculiarly ungraceful form.
1
A few years earlier, Henry Fairfeld Osborn had included illustrations of
stooped Neanderthals in various editions of his book Men of the Old Stone
Age, in which he portrayed Neanderthals as having knees habitually bent
forward without the power of straightening the joint or of standing fully
erect and hands defcient in fne motor control, lacking the delicate play
between the thumb and fngers characteristic of modern races.
2
Similarly,
William L. Straus Jr. and A. J. E. Cave, in their 1957 article Pathology and
Posture of Neanderthal Man, described the stereotype of Neanderthals in
the mid-20th century as follows:
Neanderthal man is commonly pictured as but incompletely
erect; as an almost hunchbacked creature with head thrust for-
ward, knees habitually bent. According to this view, he was a
thoroughly unattractive fellow who was but imperfectly adapted
to the upright, bipedal posture and locomotion characteristics
of the modern type of man.
3

But there is one critical problem with this account: anthropologists now
believe Neanderthals walked upright. Te turning point came with the article
by Straus and Cave just quoted. After citing all of the same passages mentioned
above that characterize Neanderthals as stooped, they argued convincingly
that this portrait, accepted as typical of the entire species, in fact represented
an individual Neanderthal who just happened to sufer from arthritis.
Central to this image of Neanderthal as brutish savage was the recon-
struction of one especially complete skeleton, found in La Chapelle-aux-
Saints, by French anatomist Marcellin Boule. Why did this particular skeleton
play such a dominant role in determining our image of Neanderthals, when
there were many other remains discovered elsewhere? Te skeleton from
1. G. Elliot Smith, The Evolution of Man (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), as cited in
William L. Straus, Jr., and A. J. E. Cave, Pathology and Posture of Neanderthal Man, Quarterly
Review of Biology 32, no. 4 (1957): 348363, esp. p. 349.
2. Henry Faireld Osborn, Men of the Old Stone Age, 3rd ed. (New York: Charles Scribners Sons),
as cited in Straus and Cave, Pathology and Posture of Neanderthal Man, p. 349.
3. Straus and Cave, Pathology and Posture of Neanderthal Man, p. 348.
251
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
LaChapelle-aux-Saints, it turns out, included a good sampling of vertebrae
bones essential to reconstructing a hominids posture, and Boules specimen
provided a logical starting point for studying the gait of early hominids.
While the Neanderthal from La Chapelle-aux-Saints may have had the
stooped posture characteristic of a modern-day human with arthritis, other
Neanderthals did not. Moreover, the La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neanderthal
did not resemble the illustrated fgures in Osborns book. Rather, Straus and
Cave argued, if he could be reincarnated and placed in a New York subway
provided that he were bathed, shaved, and dressed in modern clothingit
is doubtful whether he would attract any more attention than some of its
other denizens.
4
Compounding the fact that this particular Neanderthal had arthri-
tis, Straus and Cave contended, was the widespread presupposition that
Neanderthals were ancestral to all later hominids, rather than an independent
line. Consequently, it would be natural to attribute to them more ape-like
characteristicsa trap that many anthropologists fell into.
What lessons can SETI researchers learn from the reconstruction
of Neanderthal posture?
5
Whether sampling Martian soil or analyzing
Neanderthal bones, the conclusions we draw will depend on the observa-
tional data we have available. If we fnd a civilization on a planet circling
a Sun-like star, we should be wary of assuming that it represents a typical
extraterrestrial civilization. Rather, we should anticipate that this particular
observationthis particular civilizationis infuenced by a panoply of bio-
logical, cultural, and historical factors that we will be able to sort out only
after many years, if ever.
Finally, recall that early anthropologists were infuenced in their recon-
structions of Neanderthals by their presupposition that Neanderthals rep-
resented a phase of development in the evolution of Homo sapiens. So, too,
should we guard against imposing our own presuppositions on extraterrestrial
civilizations, making our images of extraterrestrials not so much refections
of their true nature but rather mirrors of our assumptions.
4. Straus and Cave, Pathology and Posture of Neanderthal Man, p. 359.
5. The reconstruction of Neanderthals based on the remains from La Chapelle-aux-Saints also
gives us an important lesson on the role of the popular press in communicating scientic
discoveries, providing an analogy for the journalistic response to the discovery of extrater-
restrial intelligence. For more on the conicting desires and images generated by the Old Man
from La Chapelle-aux-Saints, see Marianne Sommer, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Neanderthal
as Image and Distortion in Early 20th-Century French Science and Press, Social Studies of
Science 36, no. 2 (2006): 207240.
252
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jerry Bentley, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of History at the
University of Hawaii and editor of the Journal of World History. He has
written extensively on the cultural history of early modern Europe and on
cross-cultural interactions in world history. His research on the religious,
moral, and political writings of the Renaissance led to the publication of
Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (1983)
and Politics and Culture in Renaissance Naples (1987). Bentleys more recent
research has concentrated on global history and particularly on processes
of cross-cultural interaction. His book Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural
Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (1993) studies processes of cul-
tural exchange and religious conversion before modern times. His current
interests include processes of cross-cultural interaction and cultural exchange
in modern times.
John Billingham, B.M., B.Ch., was Senior Scientist and Trustee of the SETI
Institute. He passed away on 3 August 2013, at the age of 83. From 1991
to 1994 he served as Chief of the NASA SETI Ofce at the Ames Research
Center (ARC). Prior to that, he was Chief of the NASA ARC Life Sciences
Division, Chief of the NASA ARC Extraterrestrial Research Division, Chief
of the NASA ARC Biotechnology Division, and Chief of the NASA Johnson
Space Center Environmental Physiology Branch. He also served as a Medical
Ofcer in the Royal Air Force. Billingham was also the co-editor of Te
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: SETI (1977) and Social Implications of
the Detection of an Extraterrestrial Civilization (1999). In recognition of his
contributions to the feld of SETI research, the International Academy of
Astronautics SETI Permanent Committee established the annual Billingham
Cutting-Edge Lecture in 2005.
Garry Chick, Ph.D., is Department Head and Professor of Recreation,
Park, and Tourism Management, as well as Professor of Anthropology, at the
Pennsylvania State University. His scholarly interests include cross-cultural
research, research methods, and the relationship between culture and behav-
ior, and his geographical specializations include Mesoamerica, China, and
western Pennsylvania. Chick has co-edited Te Many Faces of Play (1986)
and Diversions and Divergences in Fields of Play (1998) and is a contribu-
tor to A Handbook of Leisure Studies (2006). He is a former president of
the Society for Cross-Cultural Research, as well as a past president of the
Association for the Study of Play. Chick has served as editor-in-chief of the
253
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
journal Leisure Sciences, and he was founding editor of Play & Culture (now
Play and Culture Studies).
Kathryn E. Denning, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of
Anthropology at York University. Her research examines scholarly and popu-
lar ideas about Others, their relationships to us, and how we can know them.
Te Others she studies include the ancient (in archaeology), the animal (in
zoos), and the alien (in SETI). In SETI, Denning studies scientists reasoning
processes, the technology and sites used to search the sky for signals, and ideas
about how one might communicate with a radically diferent intelligence. She
is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics SETI Committee
and has research projects with the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
Steven J. Dick, Ph.D., is currently serving a one-year appointment as the
Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology at
the Library of Congresss John W. Kluge Center. From 2011 to 2012 he held
the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the National Air
and Space Museum. Dick served as the NASA Chief Historian and Director
of the NASA History Ofce from 2003 to 2009 and, prior to that, as an
astronomer and historian of science at the U.S. Naval Observatory for more
than two decades. Among his books are Plurality of Worlds: Te Origins of the
Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (1982), Te Biological
Universe: Te Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits
of Science (1996), Life on Other Worlds (1998), Many Worlds: Te New
Universe, Extraterrestrial Life, and the Teological Implications (2000), and
Te Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology (2004).
In 2006, Dick received the LeRoy E. Doggett Prize from the American
Astronomical Society for a career that has signifcantly infuenced the feld
of the history of astronomy. In 2009, minor planet 6544 Stevendick was
named in his honor.
William H. Edmondson, Ph.D., is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the
University of Birmingham. His research interests include topics in linguistics,
human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and novel SETI search
strategies and methods of data analysis. At the University of Birmingham he
has been actively involved in the Artifcial Intelligence and Cognitive Science
Group, the Advanced Interaction Group, the Natural Language Processing
Group, and the Linguistics Group. As former Admissions Tutor for Computer
Science at the University of Birmingham, Edmondson was responsible for
undergraduate admissions for one of the leading programs in computer sci-
ence in the United Kingdom.
254
About the Authors
Ben Finney, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology
at the University of Hawaii. His feldwork has taken him throughout
Polynesia and to Papua New Guinea, as well as to NASAs Johnson Space
Center and Russias Star City. His research involves testing reconstructed
Polynesian voyaging canoes and methods of navigation on long ocean cross-
ings to resolve issues concerning island discovery, settlement, and subsequent
inter-island voyaging, as well as applying anthropological perspectives to
SETI and to human exploration of and expansion into space. Finneys books
include Pacifc Navigation and Voyaging (1976), Hokulea: Te Way to Tahiti
(1979), and Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience (1985), From
Sea to Space (1992), and Voyage of Rediscovery: A Cultural Odyssey Trough
Polynesia (1994).
Stephen J. Garber, M.P.I.A., M.S., works in the NASA History Program
Ofce, where he is responsible for editing multiple book projects, running
the ofces intern program, and maintaining its Web sites. He began his
career at NASA in 1993 as a Presidential Management Intern in the Ofce
of Space Science. He served as the acting head of the NASA History Ofce
from 2002 to 2003 and again from 2009 to 2010. He has written on NASAs
organizational culture, President Kennedys attitudes toward space, the design
of the Space Shuttle, and the Soviet Buran Space Shuttle and is currently
fnishing a policy history of NASAs Decadal Planning Team and President
George W. Bushs Vision for Space Exploration. He also has written on intel-
ligence history, international afairs, and defense policy He holds a bachelors
degree in politics from Brandeis University, a masters degree in public and
international afairs from the University of Pittsburgh, and a masters degree
in science and technology studies from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University.
Albert A. Harrison, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus in the Department of
Psychology at the University of California, Davis. In addition to researching
the societal dimensions of astrobiology and SETI, he studies human adapta-
tion to spacefight and spacefight-analogous environments. Harrisons books
include Living Aloft: Human Requirements for Extended Spacefight (1985), and
From Antarctica to Outer Space: Life in Isolation and Confnement (1991), After
Contact: Te Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life (1997), Spacefaring: Te
Human Dimension (2001), and Starstruck: Cosmic Visions in Science, Religion,
and Folklore (2007).
Dominique Lestel, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at the cole normale supri-
eure (ENS). A founding member of the Department of Cognitive Science at
255
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
ENS, Lestel is also a member of its Department of Philosophy.Since 1998,
he also has been a researcher at the Musum National dHistoire Naturelle,
where he became the Director of the Ethoecology and Cognitive Ethology
Research Group of the Laboratory of Eco-anthropology and Ethnobiology.
Lestel is developing a philosophical anthropology that maintains, frst, that
to be human is to establish particularly strong connections to other animals
and, second, that new technologies could signifcantly improve these con-
nections. His books include Lanimal singulier (2004), and Les grandes singes:
Lhumanit au fond des yeux (2005), Les animaux sont-ils intelligents? (2006),
Les origines animales de la culture (2009), Lanimal est lavenir de lhomme
(2010), and Apologie du carnivore (2011).
Douglas Raybeck, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus in the Department of
Anthropology at Hamilton College as well as Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology
at Amherst College. His research addresses topics rangingfrom nonverbal
communication and psycholinguistics to physiological correlates of behav-
ioral dispositions. He is an expert in future studies and has written a book
titled Looking Down the Road: A Systems Approach to Future Studies (2000)
on the topic. He has studied Malaysian culture and in 1996 published Mad
Dogs, Englishmen, and the Errant Anthropologist, a book summarizing his feld-
work in Kelantan, Malaysia. Raybeck is co-editor of Deviance: Anthropological
Perspectives (1991) and Improving College Education of Veterans (2010), as well
as co-author of Improving Student Memory (1993) and Improving Memory and
Study Skills: Advances in Teory and Practice (2002). He has been a Fellow
at the National Institutes of Health and is past president of the Society for
Cross-Cultural Research.
Richard Saint-Gelais, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Literature
at the Universit Laval, where his research and teaching focus on literary
theory, 20th-century literature, and paraliterature. Following his work on
the Nouveau Roman, Saint-Gelais examined the relationship between sci-
ence fction and modern fction; more recently, he has explored the concept
of transfctionality. Saint-Gelais is a member of the Interuniversity Research
Center on Quebec Literature and Culture, and his books include Lempire du
pseudo: Modernits de la science-fction (1999), Nouvelles tendances en thorie des
genres (1998), and Fictions transfugs: La transfctionnalit et ses enjeux (2011).
John W. Traphagan, Ph.D., is Professor of Religious Studies and a fac-
ulty afliate of the Population Research Center at the University of Texas,
Austin, where he also serves as Centennial Commission in the Liberal Arts
Fellow.His research interests revolve around three primary areas: religion
256
About the Authors
and society in Japan, medical ethics and medical anthropology, and anthro-
pological approaches to religion. He is the author of Rethinking Autonomy: A
Critique of Principlism in Biomedical Ethics (2013), Taming Oblivion: Aging
Bodies and the Fear of Senility in Japan (2000), and Te Practice of Concern:
Ritual, Well-Being, and Aging in Rural Japan (2004). In addition, Traphagan
has edited and co-edited a number of books on similar topics.In support
of his research, Traphagan has received grants from the National Institutes
of Health, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the
Social Science Research Council, the Association for Asian Studies, and the
American Philosophical Society. In 2010 he was elected Secretary General of
the Japan Anthropology Workshop.
Douglas A. Vakoch, Ph.D., is Director of Interstellar Message Composition
at the SETI Institute, as well as Professor in the Department of Clinical
Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He serves as chair
of both the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Study Group on
Interstellar Message Construction and the IAA Study Group on Active
SETI: Scientifc, Technical, Societal, and Legal Dimensions. Vakochs books
include Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (2011), Psychology
of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective (2011),
Ecofeminism and Rhetoric: Critical Perspectives on Sex, Technology, and Discourse
(2011), Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature (2012),
Astrobiology, History, and Society: Life Beyond Earth and the Impact of Discovery
(2013), Altruism in Cross-Cultural Perspective (2013), and Extraterrestrial
Altruism: Evolution and Ethics in the Cosmos (2014).
Paul K. Wason, Ph.D., is Vice President of Life Sciences and Genetics at
the John Templeton Foundation, where he develops new research initiatives
on the fundamental nature and evolution of life and mind, especially as
they intersect with meaning and purpose. Prior to joining the Templeton
Foundation, he was Director of Foundations and Corporations at Bates
College. In Te Archaeology of Rank (1994), Wason examines social evolu-
tion, inequality, and archaeological theory.
257
THE NASA HISTORY SERIES
Reference Works, NASA SP-4000:
Grimwood, James M. Project Mercury: A Chronology. NASA SP-4001,
1963.
Grimwood, James M., and Barton C. Hacker, with Peter J. Vorzimmer.
Project Gemini Technology and Operations: A Chronology. NASA
SP-4002, 1969.
Link, Mae Mills. Space Medicine in Project Mercury. NASA SP-4003, 1965.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1963: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4004, 1964.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1964: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4005, 1965.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1965: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4006, 1966.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1966: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4007, 1967.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1967: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4008, 1968.
Ertel, Ivan D., and Mary Louise Morse. Te Apollo Spacecraft: A
Chronology, Volume I, Trough November 7, 1962. NASA SP-4009,
1969.
Morse, Mary Louise, and Jean Kernahan Bays. Te Apollo Spacecraft: A
Chronology, Volume II, November 8, 1962September 30, 1964. NASA
SP-4009, 1973.
Brooks, Courtney G., and Ivan D. Ertel. Te Apollo Spacecraft: A
Chronology, Volume III, October 1, 1964January 20, 1966. NASA
SP-4009, 1973.
259
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Ertel, Ivan D., and Roland W. Newkirk, with Courtney G. Brooks. Te
Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume IV, January 21, 1966July 13,
1974. NASA SP-4009, 1978.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1968: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4010, 1969.
Newkirk, Roland W., and Ivan D. Ertel, with Courtney G. Brooks. Skylab:
A Chronology. NASA SP-4011, 1977.
Van Nimmen, Jane, and Leonard C. Bruno, with Robert L. Rosholt. NASA
Historical Data Book, Volume I: NASA Resources, 19581968. NASA
SP-4012, 1976; rep. ed. 1988.
Ezell, Linda Neuman. NASA Historical Data Book, Volume II: Programs and
Projects, 19581968. NASA SP-4012, 1988.
Ezell, Linda Neuman. NASA Historical Data Book, Volume III: Programs
and Projects, 19691978. NASA SP-4012, 1988.
Gawdiak, Ihor, with Helen Fedor. NASA Historical Data Book, Volume IV:
NASA Resources, 19691978. NASA SP-4012, 1994.
Rumerman, Judy A. NASA Historical Data Book, Volume V: NASA Launch
Systems, Space Transportation, Human Spacefight, and Space Science,
19791988. NASA SP-4012, 1999.
Rumerman, Judy A. NASA Historical Data Book, Volume VI: NASA Space
Applications, Aeronautics and Space Research and Technology, Tracking
and Data Acquisition/Support Operations, Commercial Programs, and
Resources, 19791988. NASA SP-4012, 1999.
Rumerman, Judy A. NASA Historical Data Book, Volume VII: NASA
Launch Systems, Space Transportation, Human Spacefight, and Space
Science, 19891998. NASA SP-2009-4012, 2009.
Rumerman, Judy A. NASA Historical Data Book, Volume VIII: NASA Earth
Science and Space Applications, Aeronautics, Technology, and Exploration,
Tracking and Data Acquisition/Space Operations, Facilities and Resources,
19891998. NASA SP-2012-4012, 2012.
260
The NASA History Series
No SP-4013.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1969: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4014, 1970.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1970: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4015, 1972.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1971: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4016, 1972.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1972: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4017, 1974.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1973: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4018, 1975.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1974: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4019, 1977.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1975: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4020, 1979.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1976: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4021, 1984.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1977: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4022, 1986.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1978: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4023, 1986.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 19791984: Chronology of Science, Technology,
and Policy. NASA SP-4024, 1988.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1985: Chronology of Science, Technology, and
Policy. NASA SP-4025, 1990.
Noordung, Hermann. Te Problem of Space Travel: Te Rocket Motor.
Edited by Ernst Stuhlinger and J. D. Hunley, with Jennifer Garland.
NASA SP-4026, 1995.
261
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Gawdiak, Ihor Y., Ramon J. Miro, and Sam Stueland. Astronautics and
Aeronautics, 19861990: A Chronology. NASA SP-4027, 1997.
Gawdiak, Ihor Y., and Charles Shetland. Astronautics and Aeronautics,
19911995: A Chronology. NASA SP-2000-4028, 2000.
Orlof, Richard W. Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference. NASA
SP-2000-4029, 2000.
Lewis, Marieke, and Ryan Swanson. Astronautics and Aeronautics: A
Chronology, 19962000. NASA SP-2009-4030, 2009.
Ivey, William Noel, and Marieke Lewis. Astronautics and Aeronautics: A
Chronology, 20012005. NASA SP-2010-4031, 2010.
Buchalter, Alice R., and William Noel Ivey. Astronautics and Aeronautics: A
Chronology, 2006. NASA SP-2011-4032, 2010.
Lewis, Marieke. Astronautics and Aeronautics: A Chronology, 2007. NASA
SP-2011-4033, 2011.
Lewis, Marieke. Astronautics and Aeronautics: A Chronology, 2008. NASA
SP-2012-4034, 2012.
Lewis, Marieke. Astronautics and Aeronautics: A Chronology, 2009. NASA
SP-2012-4035, 2012.
Management Histories, NASA SP-4100:
Rosholt, Robert L. An Administrative History of NASA, 19581963. NASA
SP-4101, 1966.
Levine, Arnold S. Managing NASA in the Apollo Era. NASA SP-4102,
1982.
Roland, Alex. Model Research: Te National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics, 19151958. NASA SP-4103, 1985.
Fries, Sylvia D. NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo. NASA SP-4104,
1992.
262
The NASA History Series
Glennan, T. Keith. Te Birth of NASA: Te Diary of T. Keith Glennan.
Edited by J. D. Hunley. NASA SP-4105, 1993.
Seamans, Robert C. Aiming at Targets: Te Autobiography of Robert C.
Seamans. NASA SP-4106, 1996.
Garber, Stephen J., ed. Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Forty Years of
Human Spacefight Symposium. NASA SP-2002-4107, 2002.
Mallick, Donald L., with Peter W. Merlin. Te Smell of Kerosene: A Test
Pilots Odyssey. NASA SP-4108, 2003.
Ilif, Kenneth W., and Curtis L. Peebles. From Runway to Orbit: Refections
of a NASA Engineer. NASA SP-2004-4109, 2004.
Chertok, Boris. Rockets and People, Volume I. NASA SP-2005-4110, 2005.
Chertok, Boris. Rockets and People: Creating a Rocket Industry, Volume II.
NASA SP-2006-4110, 2006.
Chertok, Boris. Rockets and People: Hot Days of the Cold War, Volume III.
NASA SP-2009-4110, 2009.
Chertok, Boris. Rockets and People: Te Moon Race, Volume IV. NASA
SP-2011-4110, 2011.
Laufer, Alexander, Todd Post, and Edward Hofman. Shared Voyage:
Learning and Unlearning from Remarkable Projects. NASA SP-2005-
4111, 2005.
Dawson, Virginia P., and Mark D. Bowles. Realizing the Dream of Flight:
Biographical Essays in Honor of the Centennial of Flight, 19032003.
NASA SP-2005-4112, 2005.
Mudgway, Douglas J. William H. Pickering: Americas Deep Space Pioneer.
NASA SP-2008-4113, 2008.
Wright, Rebecca, Sandra Johnson, and Steven J. Dick. NASA at 50:
Interviews with NASAs Senior Leadership. NASA SP-2012-4114, 2012.
263
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Project Histories, NASA SP-4200:
Swenson, Loyd S., Jr., James M. Grimwood, and Charles C. Alexander.
Tis New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury. NASA SP-4201, 1966;
rep. ed. 1999.
Green, Constance McLaughlin, and Milton Lomask. Vanguard: A History.
NASA SP-4202, 1970; rep. ed. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971.
Hacker, Barton C., and James M. Grimwood. On the Shoulders of Titans: A
History of Project Gemini. NASA SP-4203, 1977; rep. ed. 2002.
Benson, Charles D., and William Barnaby Faherty. Moonport: A History of
Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations. NASA SP-4204, 1978.
Brooks, Courtney G., James M. Grimwood, and Loyd S. Swenson, Jr.
Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft. NASA
SP-4205, 1979.
Bilstein, Roger E. Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/
Saturn Launch Vehicles. NASA SP-4206, 1980 and 1996.
No SP-4207.
Compton, W. David, and Charles D. Benson. Living and Working in Space:
A History of Skylab. NASA SP-4208, 1983.
Ezell, Edward Clinton, and Linda Neuman Ezell. Te Partnership: A
History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. NASA SP-4209, 1978.
Hall, R. Cargill. Lunar Impact: A History of Project Ranger. NASA SP-4210,
1977.
Newell, Homer E. Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science.
NASA SP-4211, 1980.
Ezell, Edward Clinton, and Linda Neuman Ezell. On Mars: Exploration of
the Red Planet, 19581978. NASA SP-4212, 1984.
Pitts, John A. Te Human Factor: Biomedicine in the Manned Space Program
to 1980. NASA SP-4213, 1985.
264
The NASA History Series
Compton, W. David. Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo
Lunar Exploration Missions. NASA SP-4214, 1989.
Naugle, John E. First Among Equals: Te Selection of NASA Space Science
Experiments. NASA SP-4215, 1991.
Wallace, Lane E. Airborne Trailblazer: Two Decades with NASA Langleys
737 Flying Laboratory. NASA SP-4216, 1994.
Butrica, Andrew J., ed. Beyond the Ionosphere: Fifty Years of Satellite
Communications. NASA SP-4217, 1997.
Butrica, Andrew J. To See the Unseen: A History of Planetary Radar
Astronomy. NASA SP-4218, 1996.
Mack, Pamela E., ed. From Engineering Science to Big Science: Te NACA
and NASA Collier Trophy Research Project Winners. NASA SP-4219,
1998.
Reed, R. Dale. Wingless Flight: Te Lifting Body Story. NASA SP-4220,
1998.
Heppenheimer, T. A. Te Space Shuttle Decision: NASAs Search for a
Reusable Space Vehicle. NASA SP-4221, 1999.
Hunley, J. D., ed. Toward Mach 2: Te Douglas D-558 Program. NASA
SP-4222, 1999.
Swanson, Glen E., ed. Before Tis Decade Is Out Personal Refections on
the Apollo Program. NASA SP-4223, 1999.
Tomayko, James E. Computers Take Flight: A History of NASAs Pioneering
Digital Fly-By-Wire Project. NASA SP-4224, 2000.
Morgan, Clay. Shuttle-Mir: Te United States and Russia Share Historys
Highest Stage. NASA SP-2001-4225, 2001.
Leary, William M. We Freeze to Please: A History of NASAs Icing Research
Tunnel and the Quest for Safety. NASA SP-2002-4226, 2002.
265
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Mudgway, Douglas J. Uplink-Downlink: A History of the Deep Space
Network, 19571997. NASA SP-2001-4227, 2001.
No SP-4228 or SP-4229.
Dawson, Virginia P., and Mark D. Bowles. Taming Liquid Hydrogen: Te
Centaur Upper Stage Rocket, 19582002. NASA SP-2004-4230, 2004.
Meltzer, Michael. Mission to Jupiter: A History of the Galileo Project. NASA
SP-2007-4231, 2007.
Heppenheimer, T. A. Facing the Heat Barrier: A History of Hypersonics.
NASA SP-2007-4232, 2007.
Tsiao, Sunny. Read You Loud and Clear! Te Story of NASAs Spacefight
Tracking and Data Network. NASA SP-2007-4233, 2007.
Meltzer, Michael. When Biospheres Collide: A History of NASAs Planetary
Protection Programs. NASA SP-2011-4234, 2011.
Center Histories, NASA SP-4300:
Rosenthal, Alfred. Venture into Space: Early Years of Goddard Space Flight
Center. NASA SP-4301, 1985.
Hartman, Edwin P. Adventures in Research: A History of Ames Research
Center, 19401965. NASA SP-4302, 1970.
Hallion, Richard P. On the Frontier: Flight Research at Dryden, 19461981.
NASA SP-4303, 1984.
Muenger, Elizabeth A. Searching the Horizon: A History of Ames Research
Center, 19401976. NASA SP-4304, 1985.
Hansen, James R. Engineer in Charge: A History of the Langley Aeronautical
Laboratory, 19171958. NASA SP-4305, 1987.
Dawson, Virginia P. Engines and Innovation: Lewis Laboratory and American
Propulsion Technology. NASA SP-4306, 1991.
Dethlof, Henry C. Suddenly Tomorrow Came: A History of the Johnson
Space Center, 19571990. NASA SP-4307, 1993.
266
The NASA History Series
Hansen, James R. Spacefight Revolution: NASA Langley Research Center
from Sputnik to Apollo. NASA SP-4308, 1995.
Wallace, Lane E. Flights of Discovery: An Illustrated History of the Dryden
Flight Research Center. NASA SP-4309, 1996.
Herring, Mack R. Way Station to Space: A History of the John C. Stennis
Space Center. NASA SP-4310, 1997.
Wallace, Harold D., Jr. Wallops Station and the Creation of an American
Space Program. NASA SP-4311, 1997.
Wallace, Lane E. Dreams, Hopes, Realities. NASAs Goddard Space Flight
Center: Te First Forty Years. NASA SP-4312, 1999.
Dunar, Andrew J., and Stephen P. Waring. Power to Explore: A History of
Marshall Space Flight Center, 19601990. NASA SP-4313, 1999.
Bugos, Glenn E. Atmosphere of Freedom: Sixty Years at the NASA Ames
Research Center. NASA SP-2000-4314, 2000.
No SP-4315.
Schultz, James. Crafting Flight: Aircraft Pioneers and the Contributions of
the Men and Women of NASA Langley Research Center. NASA SP-2003-
4316, 2003.
Bowles, Mark D. Science in Flux: NASAs Nuclear Program at Plum Brook
Station, 19552005. NASA SP-2006-4317, 2006.
Wallace, Lane E. Flights of Discovery: An Illustrated History of the Dryden
Flight Research Center. NASA SP-2007-4318, 2007. Revised version of
NASA SP-4309.
Arrighi, Robert S. Revolutionary Atmosphere: Te Story of the Altitude Wind
Tunnel and the Space Power Chambers. NASA SP-2010-4319, 2010.
Bugos, Glenn E. Atmosphere of Freedom: Seventy Years at the NASA Ames
Research Center. NASA SP-2010-4314, 2010. Revised Version of NASA
SP-2000-4314.
267
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
General Histories, NASA SP-4400:
Corliss, William R. NASA Sounding Rockets, 19581968: A Historical
Summary. NASA SP-4401, 1971.
Wells, Helen T., Susan H. Whiteley, and Carrie Karegeannes. Origins of
NASA Names. NASA SP-4402, 1976.
Anderson, Frank W., Jr. Orders of Magnitude: A History of NACA and
NASA, 19151980. NASA SP-4403, 1981.
Sloop, John L. Liquid Hydrogen as a Propulsion Fuel, 19451959. NASA
SP-4404, 1978.
Roland, Alex. A Spacefaring People: Perspectives on Early Spacefight. NASA
SP-4405, 1985.
Bilstein, Roger E. Orders of Magnitude: A History of the NACA and NASA,
19151990. NASA SP-4406, 1989.
Logsdon, John M., ed., with Linda J. Lear, Jannelle Warren Findley, Ray
A. Williamson, and Dwayne A. Day. Exploring the Unknown: Selected
Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume I:
Organizing for Exploration. NASA SP-4407, 1995.
Logsdon, John M., ed., with Dwayne A. Day and Roger D. Launius.
Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S.
Civil Space Program, Volume II: External Relationships. NASA SP-4407,
1996.
Logsdon, John M., ed., with Roger D. Launius, David H. Onkst, and
Stephen J. Garber. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the
History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume III: Using Space. NASA
SP-4407, 1998.
Logsdon, John M., ed., with Ray A. Williamson, Roger D. Launius,
Russell J. Acker, Stephen J. Garber, and Jonathan L. Friedman.
Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S.
Civil Space Program, Volume IV: Accessing Space. NASA SP-4407, 1999.
Logsdon, John M., ed., with Amy Paige Snyder, Roger D. Launius,
Stephen J. Garber, and Regan Anne Newport. Exploring the Unknown:
268
The NASA History Series
Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume
V: Exploring the Cosmos. NASA SP-2001-4407, 2001.
Logsdon, John M., ed., with Stephen J. Garber, Roger D. Launius, and
Ray A. Williamson. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the
History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume VI: Space and Earth
Science. NASA SP-2004-4407, 2004.
Logsdon, John M., ed., with Roger D. Launius. Exploring the Unknown:
Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume
VII: Human Spacefight: Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. NASA
SP-2008-4407, 2008.
Siddiqi, Asif A., Challenge to Apollo: Te Soviet Union and the Space Race,
19451974. NASA SP-2000-4408, 2000.
Hansen, James R., ed. Te Wind and Beyond: Journey into the History of
Aerodynamics in America, Volume 1: Te Ascent of the Airplane. NASA
SP-2003-4409, 2003.
Hansen, James R., ed. Te Wind and Beyond: Journey into the History of
Aerodynamics in America, Volume 2: Reinventing the Airplane. NASA
SP-2007-4409, 2007.
Hogan, Tor. Mars Wars: Te Rise and Fall of the Space Exploration
Initiative. NASA SP-2007-4410, 2007.
Vakoch, Douglas A., ed. Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary
Research in Historical Perspective. NASA SP-2011-4411, 2011.
Monographs in Aerospace History, NASA SP-4500:
Launius, Roger D., and Aaron K. Gillette, comps. Toward a History of the
Space Shuttle: An Annotated Bibliography. Monographs in Aerospace
History, No. 1, 1992.
Launius, Roger D., and J. D. Hunley, comps. An Annotated Bibliography of
the Apollo Program. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 2, 1994.
Launius, Roger D. Apollo: A Retrospective Analysis. Monographs in
Aerospace History, No. 3, 1994.
269
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Hansen, James R. Enchanted Rendezvous: John C. Houbolt and the Genesis of
the Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous Concept. Monographs in Aerospace History,
No. 4, 1995.
Gorn, Michael H. Hugh L. Drydens Career in Aviation and Space.
Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 5, 1996.
Powers, Sheryll Goecke. Women in Flight Research at NASA Dryden Flight
Research Center from 1946 to 1995. Monographs in Aerospace History,
No. 6, 1997.
Portree, David S. F., and Robert C. Trevino. Walking to Olympus: An EVA
Chronology. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 7, 1997.
Logsdon, John M., moderator. Legislative Origins of the National
Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958: Proceedings of an Oral History
Workshop. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 8, 1998.
Rumerman, Judy A., comp. U.S. Human Spacefight: A Record of
Achievement, 19611998. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 9,
1998.
Portree, David S. F. NASAs Origins and the Dawn of the Space Age.
Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 10, 1998.
Logsdon, John M. Together in Orbit: Te Origins of International
Cooperation in the Space Station. Monographs in Aerospace History, No.
11, 1998.
Phillips, W. Hewitt. Journey in Aeronautical Research: A Career at NASA
Langley Research Center. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 12,
1998.
Braslow, Albert L. A History of Suction-Type Laminar-Flow Control with
Emphasis on Flight Research. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 13,
1999.
Logsdon, John M., moderator. Managing the Moon Program: Lessons
Learned from Apollo. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 14, 1999.
270
The NASA History Series
Perminov, V. G. Te Difcult Road to Mars: A Brief History of Mars
Exploration in the Soviet Union. Monographs in Aerospace History, No.
15, 1999.
Tucker, Tom. Touchdown: Te Development of Propulsion Controlled Aircraft
at NASA Dryden. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 16, 1999.
Maisel, Martin, Demo J. Giulanetti, and Daniel C. Dugan. Te
History of the XV-15 Tilt Rotor Research Aircraft: From Concept to
Flight. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 17, 2000. NASA
SP-2000-4517.
Jenkins, Dennis R. Hypersonics Before the Shuttle: A Concise History of the
X-15 Research Airplane. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 18,
2000. NASA SP-2000-4518.
Chambers, Joseph R. Partners in Freedom: Contributions of the Langley
Research Center to U.S. Military Aircraft of the 1990s. Monographs in
Aerospace History, No. 19, 2000. NASA SP-2000-4519.
Waltman, Gene L. Black Magic and Gremlins: Analog Flight Simulations at
NASAs Flight Research Center. Monographs in Aerospace History, No.
20, 2000. NASA SP-2000-4520.
Portree, David S. F. Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning,
19502000. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 21, 2001. NASA
SP-2001-4521.
Tompson, Milton O., with J. D. Hunley. Flight Research: Problems
Encountered and What Tey Should Teach Us. Monographs in Aerospace
History, No. 22, 2001. NASA SP-2001-4522.
Tucker, Tom. Te Eclipse Project. Monographs in Aerospace History, No.
23, 2001. NASA SP-2001-4523.
Siddiqi, Asif A. Deep Space Chronicle: A Chronology of Deep Space and
Planetary Probes, 19582000. Monographs in Aerospace History, No.
24, 2002. NASA SP-2002-4524.
271
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Merlin, Peter W. Mach 3+: NASA/USAF YF-12 Flight Research, 1969
1979. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 25, 2001. NASA
SP-2001-4525.
Anderson, Seth B. Memoirs of an Aeronautical Engineer: Flight Tests at Ames
Research Center: 19401970. Monographs in Aerospace History, No.
26, 2002. NASA SP-2002-4526.
Renstrom, Arthur G. Wilbur and Orville Wright: A Bibliography
Commemorating the One-Hundredth Anniversary of the First Powered
Flight on December 17, 1903. Monographs in Aerospace History, No.
27, 2002. NASA SP-2002-4527.
No monograph 28.
Chambers, Joseph R. Concept to Reality: Contributions of the NASA Langley
Research Center to U.S. Civil Aircraft of the 1990s. Monographs in
Aerospace History, No. 29, 2003. NASA SP-2003-4529.
Peebles, Curtis, ed. Te Spoken Word: Recollections of Dryden History, Te
Early Years. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 30, 2003. NASA
SP-2003-4530.
Jenkins, Dennis R., Tony Landis, and Jay Miller. American X-Vehicles: An
InventoryX-1 to X-50. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 31,
2003. NASA SP-2003-4531.
Renstrom, Arthur G. Wilbur and Orville Wright: A Chronology
Commemorating the One-Hundredth Anniversary of the First Powered
Flight on December 17, 1903. Monographs in Aerospace History, No.
32, 2003. NASA SP-2003-4532.
Bowles, Mark D., and Robert S. Arrighi. NASAs Nuclear Frontier: Te
Plum Brook Research Reactor. Monographs in Aerospace History, No.
33, 2004. NASA SP-2004-4533.
Wallace, Lane, and Christian Gelzer. Nose Up: High Angle-of-Attack and
Trust Vectoring Research at NASA Dryden, 19792001. Monographs in
Aerospace History, No. 34, 2009. NASA SP-2009-4534.
272
The NASA History Series
Matranga, Gene J., C. Wayne Ottinger, Calvin R. Jarvis, and D.Christian
Gelzer. Unconventional, Contrary, and Ugly: Te Lunar Landing Research
Vehicle. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 35, 2006. NASA
SP-2004-4535.
McCurdy, Howard E. Low-Cost Innovation in Spacefight: Te History of
the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Mission. Monographs in
Aerospace History, No. 36, 2005. NASA SP-2005-4536.
Seamans, Robert C., Jr. Project Apollo: Te Tough Decisions. Monographs in
Aerospace History, No. 37, 2005. NASA SP-2005-4537.
Lambright, W. Henry. NASA and the Environment: Te Case of Ozone
Depletion. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 38, 2005. NASA
SP-2005-4538.
Chambers, Joseph R. Innovation in Flight: Research of the NASA
Langley Research Center on Revolutionary Advanced Concepts for
Aeronautics. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 39, 2005. NASA
SP-2005-4539.
Phillips, W. Hewitt. Journey into Space Research: Continuation of a Career at
NASA Langley Research Center. Monographs in Aerospace History, No.
40, 2005. NASA SP-2005-4540.
Rumerman, Judy A., Chris Gamble, and Gabriel Okolski, comps. U.S.
Human Spacefight: A Record of Achievement, 19612006. Monographs
in Aerospace History, No. 41, 2007. NASA SP-2007-4541.
Peebles, Curtis. Te Spoken Word: Recollections of Dryden History Beyond
the Sky. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 42, 2011. NASA
SP-2011-4542.
Dick, Steven J., Stephen J. Garber, and Jane H. Odom. Research in NASA
History. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 43, 2009. NASA
SP-2009-4543.
Merlin, Peter W. Ikhana: Unmanned Aircraft System Western States Fire
Missions. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 44, 2009. NASA
SP-2009-4544.
273
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Fisher, Steven C., and Shamim A. Rahman. Remembering the Giants: Apollo
Rocket Propulsion Development. Monographs in Aerospace History, No.
45, 2009. NASA SP-2009-4545.
Gelzer, Christian. Fairing Well: From Shoebox to Bat Truck and Beyond,
Aerodynamic Truck Research at NASAs Dryden Flight Research
Center. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 46, 2011. NASA
SP-2011-4546.
Arrighi, Robert. Pursuit of Power: NASAs Propulsion Systems Laboratory
No. 1 and 2. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 48, 2012. NASA
SP-2012-4548.
Goodrich, Malinda K., Alice R. Buchalter, and Patrick M. Miller, comps.
Toward a History of the Space Shuttle: An Annotated Bibliography, Part 2
(19922011). Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 49, 2012. NASA
SP-2012-4549.
Electronic Media, NASA SP-4600:
Remembering Apollo 11: Te 30th Anniversary Data Archive CD-ROM.
NASA SP-4601, 1999.
Remembering Apollo 11: Te 35th Anniversary Data Archive CD-ROM.
NASA SP-2004-4601, 2004. Tis is an update of the 1999 edition.
Te Mission Transcript Collection: U.S. Human Spacefight Missions from
Mercury Redstone 3 to Apollo 17. NASA SP-2000-4602, 2001.
Shuttle-Mir: Te United States and Russia Share Historys Highest Stage.
NASA SP-2001-4603, 2002.
U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission Presents Born of DreamsInspired by
Freedom. NASA SP-2004-4604, 2004.
Of Ashes and Atoms: A Documentary on the NASA Plum Brook Reactor
Facility. NASA SP-2005-4605, 2005.
Taming Liquid Hydrogen: Te Centaur Upper Stage Rocket Interactive
CD-ROM. NASA SP-2004-4606, 2004.
274
The NASA History Series
Fueling Space Exploration: Te History of NASAs Rocket Engine Test Facility
DVD. NASA SP-2005-4607, 2005.
Altitude Wind Tunnel at NASA Glenn Research Center: An Interactive History
CD-ROM. NASA SP-2008-4608, 2008.
A Tunnel Trough Time: Te History of NASAs Altitude Wind Tunnel. NASA
SP-2010-4609, 2010.
Conference Proceedings, NASA SP-4700:
Dick, Steven J., and Keith Cowing, eds. Risk and Exploration: Earth, Sea
and the Stars. NASA SP-2005-4701, 2005.
Dick, Steven J., and Roger D. Launius. Critical Issues in the History of
Spacefight. NASA SP-2006-4702, 2006.
Dick, Steven J., ed. Remembering the Space Age: Proceedings of the 50th
Anniversary Conference. NASA SP-2008-4703, 2008.
Dick, Steven J., ed. NASAs First 50 Years: Historical Perspectives. NASA
SP-2010-4704, 2010.
Societal Impact, NASA SP-4800:
Dick, Steven J., and Roger D. Launius. Societal Impact of Spacefight.
NASA SP-2007-4801, 2007.
Dick, Steven J., and Mark L. Lupisella. Cosmos and Culture: Cultural
Evolution in a Cosmic Context. NASA SP-2009-4802, 2009.
275
INDEX
Numbers in bold indicate pages with photos and tables.
A
Abduction, 8485, 85n8, 94
Acta Astronautica, 16, 59, 69
Active SETI: control over messages sent,
18788; defnition and concept of, xxv,
101, 17576; design and subject of
messages, 140, 176185; KEO satellite
project, xxvi, 185, 188, 189190;
opinions and concerns about, 18589.
See also Messaging extraterrestrial
intelligence (METI).
Adams, Jim, 4
Adovasio, James, 122
Advanced Solid Rocket Motor program,
38
Aesthetics, 16162
Africa, 226
After Contact (Harrison), 60
Agency: human agency detection device,
128; inferring agency and archaeology,
11314; recognition of intentional and
purposeful, 11718, 12729
Air Force, U.S., Allen Telescope Array use
by, 43, 43n66, 47
Alberts, Bruce, 45n74
Aldrovandi, Ulisse, 117
Alexander, Richard, 215
Allen, Paul, 4142
Allen Telescope Array (ATA), 6, 4243,
43n66, 47
Alphabets, 85
Altruism, 82, 170, 246
Ambartsumian, Viktor, 23
American Anthropological Association
(AAA) conferences, xivxv, xv n2, 55,
61
American Society of Engineering
Education, 4
Americas: Central Civilization, 226;
Columbuss arrival in, 100; dating of
archaeological sites in, 12122
Ames Research Center: Biotechnology
Division, 3; Committee on Interstellar
Communications, 6; Engineering
Systems Design, Summer Faculty
Fellowship Program, 45; Exobiology
Division, 3, 8, 8n15, 13; funding for
SETI, 6, 9, 1011, 12; interstellar
communication lecture series, 4; as
lead Center for SETI, 12, 26, 5354;
Life Sciences Division, 4, 14; Mark
role at, 4; mission of, 34; NASA
Astrobiology Institute, 46, 46n77;
Science Workshops on SETI, 68, 54;
SETI Science Working Group, 910.
See also NASA SETI Program.
Animals: communication of, xxviii, 213
14, 23738; ecological dominance,
215n28; evolution of, 54, 21415,
22627; genetic similarities between
humans and, 230; hive intelligence,
218; intelligence of, 21314, 23738;
physiological senses, 232; study of
communication of, xxviii
Anthropology: analogy to SETI research,
xiv, xxiixxv, 51, 6061, 99, 13133,
144, 252; armchair and distant
research, 131, 132, 134, 136141;
277
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
attitude toward extraterrestrial interests
of anthropologists, 57, 15253;
beginning of, 133; contact between
anthropologists and other cultures,
xxiixxiii, xxviii, 51, 99, 132, 238;
contact between diverse terrestrial
cultures, xxiiixxiv, 5152, 144152,
15455, 232; contributions to SETI
research, xivxv, xvixvii, xxx, 4950,
52, 5563, 6568, 9899, 98n9, 111;
cultural and social anthropology and
SETI research, 132; cultural difusion,
5758, 62, 219, 225; curiosity about
Others and, 95; defnition and concept
of, 49, 131; development of intelligent
life, opinion of anthropologists about,
xxvixxvii, 192, 200, 204; ethnographic
research, 13132; ethnology, cultural
diferences, and communication, xxviii,
229230, 23133; ethology, biological
diferences, and communication, xxviii,
229233; extraterrestrial anthropology,
5557; interpretation of data, 131;
invention of culture by anthropologists,
13334, 13738; migration and spread
of culture and inventions, 22526;
Neanderthals, reconstruction of,
25254, 254n5
Apes, 213, 217
Archaeology: agency and, 11314,
11718, 12729; analogy to SETI
research, xiv, xviixxii, 99, 11314;
cabling method of reasoning, xxii,
12223, 128; contributions to SETI
research, xiv, xxx, 63, 9899, 111;
curiosity about Others and, 95;
deciphering inscriptions, methods
for, 103; discovery and processing
of information, 1067, 11314;
ethnographic analogies, xxixxii, 116
18; goal of, 113; inferring intelligence
and, 11316, 12729; physical context
and archaeological research, 12022;
signs of human activity, 114; successful
decipherment, 10911; symbolism and
archaeological inference, 12325
Arecibo Observatory: message
transmission from, 180, 187; NASA
SETI Program research, 13, 15, 18,
1920, 28, 29, 29, 30; Project Phoenix
research, 42; SETI research at, xxvi
Argentina, SETI research in, 15, 44
Argus, Project, 15, 21, 44
Aristotle, 7071
Art: cultural knowledge, local knowledge,
and understanding, 11516; Te
Last Supper, 11516; messages as
works of, xxiv n8; Paleolithic cave
art, understanding message in, 115,
116; symbols and meaning and
interpretation of, 125
Artifcial creatures, 230
Ascher, Marcia, 5051
Ascher, Robert, 5051
Asian cultures, 145
Astrobiology: attitude of scientifc
community toward, 4547, 45n70;
challenges and limitations of, 251;
distinctions among SETI, exobiology,
and, 40n56; NASA Astrobiology
Program, 4546, 46n77; NASA grants
for research on, 46n79; public interest
in research on, 40n56, 45, 45n70, 47;
SETI Institute research on, 46; SETI
research program, 4041
Astronomers: attitude toward SETI,
4041, 15253; development of
intelligent life as inevitable, xxvi;
extraterrestrial astronomers, 179; SETI
research by, xiv, 33
Astronomy Survey Committee report
(Field Report), 12
278
Index
Auditory communication: Concert
for ET, 18182; design of messages,
17274; extraterrestrial communication
through, 79, 18182; human
communication and importance of,
xxv; KEO satellite project, xxvi, 185,
188, 189190; music, 127, 159, 164,
17778, 18182; propagation of
sound, variation in and limitations of,
xxix, 239; range of acoustic frequencies,
239; sensory biophysics and limitations
of, 238240; speed of sound, 239; voice
transmissions, 183
Australia: Parkes radio telescope research,
42, 44; SETI research in, 27, 44
Aymara ceramics, 123
Aztec civilization: contact with outsiders
and exploitation of divisions in culture,
xxiv, 14546, 155; infuence of other
civilizations on, 225; rules for ballgame
of, 219; technology development by,
221, 222
B
Baboons, 227
Babylonian culture, 224
Backus, Peter, 10
Balinese culture, 224
Ball, John, 34
Baltimore, David, 31
Barnes, Ernest W., 96n3
Barrett, Justin, 128
Baseball games, 16668
Basques culture, 224
Bateson, William, 193
Beadle, G. W., 201
Bear, Greg, 144, 156
Bebo, 183
Bees, 232
Benedict, Ruth: Te Chrysanthemum and
the Sword, xxiii, 132; interpretation of
Japanese culture by, xxiixxiii, 13238,
132n2, 132n4, 137n19, 139, 140,
141; Patterns of Culture, xxiii, 13738;
research process of, xxii, 13435, 138;
review of books by, 13536, 136n13
Benford, Gregory, 17879
Bentley, Jerry, 69, 11011
Bieri, Robert, 201
Big Ear SETI Project at Ohio State
University Radio Observatory
(OSURO), 27
Billingham, John, and NASA SETI
Program, xvxvi, 121, 26, 30, 40,
5354, 66, 68, 9798n8, 180
Billion-channel Extraterrestrial Assay
(BETA) project, 15, 4344
Biologists: attitude toward SETI, 4041;
development of intelligent life, opinions
about, xxvixxvii, 192; opinions about
existence of extraterrestrial intelligence,
3233, 35
Biology: NASA employee education and
training in, 4546, 45n74; processes for
transition from chemical to biological
activity, 19697
Birds, 195, 213
Black, Dave, 6, 7
Black Cloud (Hoyle), 218
Bonobos, 213, 23738
Boss, Alan, 210
Boule, Marcellin, 25354
Bourdieu, Pierre, 168
Bowden, Edgar, 220
Bowie, David, 182
Bowyer, Stuart, 15
Boyce, Peter, 10
Boyd, Robert, 22021
Braastad, Richard, 182
Bracewell, Ronald N., 4, 7
279
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Brasseur de Bourbourg, C. ., 74, 77
Brin, David, 186
British East India Company, 15455
Brocker, David, 19
Brown, George, Jr., 37
Brown, Harrison, 7
Brownlee, Donald, 202
Bryan, Richard, xvi, 20, 29, 31n18, 33,
3940, 41
Buescher, Vera, 7, 8, 13, 19
Burke, Bernie, 10
Burmese culture, 224
Bush, George H. W., 28
Butler, Paul, 2089
Byrne, Richard, 22627
C
Cabling method of reasoning, xxii,
12223, 128
Calico Hills site, 121
Cameron, A. G. W., 4, 7, 5051
Campbell, Bernard, 54
Carl Sagan Center/Center for SETI
Research, 46
Carneiro, Robert, 220
Casti, J. L., 216, 219
Cave, A. J. E., 25354
Central Civilization, 226
Cephalopods, 213, 21517
Cetaceans, 213, 21517
Chadwick, John, 83n5, 84
Chafer, Charles M., 182
Chaisson, Eric, 10
Champollion, Jean-Franois, xix, 7374,
84, 109
Chemical to biological activity, processes
for transition from, 19697
Chetverikov, Sergei, 194
Childhoods End (Clarke), 218
Chimpanzees, xxviii, 166n11, 213, 214,
217, 227, 230, 231, 232
Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Te,
(Benedict), xxiii, 132
China: Central Civilization, 226; cultural
complexity of, 148, 224; infuence on
other civilizations by, 225; inventions
by, 222; isolationist stance toward other
cultures, xxiv, 14849; language and
written characters, 7576, 84; Middle
Kingdom, self-image of, 148; Peking
Man, excavation of, 120; trade between
Europe and, 14849
Civilizations and culture: capacities
and characteristics of intelligent
beings, culture as basis for, 16264,
166; Central Civilization, 226;
contact between diverse terrestrial
cultures, xxiiixxiv, 5152, 144152,
15455, 232; counting methods
and cultural diferences, 16364;
cultural complexity, 22224, 22728,
228n66; cultural contacts, study of,
5152, 53, 62; cultural knowledge,
local knowledge, and understanding
communication, 11416; defnition
and concept of culture, xxvii, 16469,
169n14, 21819; difusion, cultural,
5758, 62, 219, 225; evolution of,
xxivxxv, xxiv n7, 169, 171, 171n18,
214, 225; evolution of technical
civilizations, 5253, 62; failure of
societies, reasons for, 22122, 222n50;
fuid and individualized nature of
culture, 133, 16264, 16569,
166n11; formulation of culture, 133;
heterogeneity, balanced, 158, 158n29;
historical civilizations, technology
development potential, and intelligence,
22122; homogenizing categories of
culture, 169n14; human understanding,
280
Index
limits of, xxviii, 23738; individualized
process of culture, xxiv n8, 133,
16569, 17072; intellectual culture
and context, 118120; intelligence to
create communication technology, 32;
invention of culture by anthropologists,
13334, 13738; lawful principles
to govern, 133; migration and
spread of culture and inventions,
22526; population/settlement size
and technology development, 22021,
22728; shared experiences and culture,
16668; social organization, 219220;
Standard Cross-Cultural Sample
(SCCS), xxviixxviii, xxviii n12, 222
24, 225, 225n55; symbolic meaning
and, 242, 243; technology development
and culture, 108, 219227; unitary
culture and technologically advanced
civilizations, xxivxxv, 17072
Clark, Tomas, 10
Clarke, Arthur C., 18283, 218
Cocconi, Giuseppe, 2, 24, 49, 50, 96n3
Coe, Kathryn, 203
Coe, Michael, 73, 75
Cognition and distributed cognition,
202, 24041, 243
Colonial cultural contacts, xxiiixxiv,
144152, 15455, 15759
Colonization of space, 3435, 35n34,
5758
Commission 51, International
Astronomical Union (IAU), 16
Communication: advantage of U.S. in
complex communication systems, 157;
animal communication, xxviii, 21314,
23738; biological diferences between
species, ethology, and, xxviii, 229233;
cognition, distributed cognition, and,
24041, 243; context of for SETI,
24748, 248; cultural diferences
between species, ethnology, and, xxviii,
229230, 23133; cultural knowledge,
local knowledge, and understanding
communication, 11416; defnition
and concept of, 7980, 229; difculties
of between diferent species, 79;
distal communication, 23233;
existential exchange, 231; goal of,
176; high-information contact with
extraterrestrials, 6061; human
interests and values and subject of
communication, xxvi, 17274, 18085,
189190; human successors, messages
for, xxvi, 175; intelligence to create
technology for, xxvii, 32, 205, 213,
21517, 22628; intentions and,
24243, 250; interpretive context for,
164; languages for, 6869; metaphor
of, 235; nonhuman communication,
interpretation of, 23435; number
of spoken and signed languages, 242;
philosophical openness and, 23536;
protocols for, 237; semantic exchange,
231; sensory incompatibilities and, 79;
true communication, 235; universal
interlocutors, 23335, 234n8, 236.
See also Auditory communication;
Messages; Signals; Visual
communication, symbols, and signs.
Communication with Extraterrestrial
Intelligence (CETI), 3, 7, 180
Concert for ET, 18182
Conferences, workshops, and lectures:
Ames interstellar communication
lecture series, 4; anthropology-related,
xivxv, xvi, xv n2, 55, 5961; Cultural
Aspects of SETI (CASETI) Workshops,
17, 5960; Green Bank SETI
conference, 25, 49, 50; interstellar
migration conference, 58; message
decoding, presentation on, 6869;
281
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
presentations and papers by NASA
SETI Program personnel, 16, 17;
social scientist and humanities scholar
participation in, 5254, 66; Towards
Other Planetary Systems (TOPS)
Workshops, 27; USSoviet conferences
on extraterrestrial intelligence, xvi, 5,
5253
Congress, U.S.: attitude toward SETI
research, 47; backgrounds of members,
37; cancellation of NASA SETI
Program, xvi, 20, 23, 2930, 31n18;
federal budget defcit and spending
cuts, 38; opposition to NASA SETI
Program in, xvi, 1011, 20, 23, 2627,
2829, 33, 39n51, 66; political story
behind cancellation of NASA SETI
Program, 3741
Conners, Mary, 8
Contact (flm), 45n70
Contact (Sagan), 45n70, 102
Conte, Silvio, 28, 39
Convergent evolution, 19798, 199200,
2023
Conway, Jill, 60
Conway Morris, Simon, 2023
Cook, James, 151
Corporate interests and trade, 158
Corts, Hernn, 14546
Cosmic Call II, 182
Coulter, Gary, 19, 40
Counting methods, 16364
Crichton, Michael, 206
Crick, Francis, 52
Crow, Bruce, 14
Cryptology: anticryptographic
properties of messages, 82, 82n4,
103; decipherment of extraterrestrial
messages and cryptanalysis, xxi, 103;
processes and methods, 103, 103n24;
redundancy and deciphering text,
1056; secret messages, 83, 8889,
88n11
Cullers, Kent, 10, 14, 60
Culture. See Civilizations and culture.
Cultural Aspects of SETI (CASETI)
Workshops, 17, 5960
Cultures Beyond the Earth (American
Anthropological Association), 55
Cyclops, Project and report, 46, 8, 26
D
Dalzell, Bonnie, 204
Daniel, Glyn, 117
Darlington, Cyril D., 200
Darwin, Charles, 19293, 194, 196
Davies, Paul, 184
Davis, Michael, 10
Dawkins, Richard, 203
Declaration of Principles Concerning
Activities Following the Detection of
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, 1617
Deduction, 85n8
Deep Space Communications Network,
183
Deep Space Network, 14, 1820, 26, 29
De Landa, Diego, 74
De Lon, David, 241
Denning, Kathryn, 61, 12425, 144, 189
Despain, Alan, 1314
DeVincenzi, Don, 12, 17
DeVito, Carl L., 76, 159, 177
De Vries, Hugo, 193
Diamond, Jared, 22122, 228
Dick, Steven, 1n2, 60, 144, 171n18
Difusion, cultural, 5758, 62, 219, 225
Dillehay, Tomas, 121
Distributed cognition, 24142, 243
Divergent evolution, 198
Dixon, Robert, 15
282
Index
Dobzhansky, Teodosius, xxvixxvii, 192,
19495, 19798, 199
Doddington Moor rock art,
Northumbria, 24344, 244, 244n13
Dolphins, xxvii, 25, 32, 21314, 215n28,
231, 23738
Doritos commercial, 18384
Dorothy, Project, xiii
Downs, Hugh, 182
Doyle, Arthur Conan, 88n11
Draft Declaration of Principles
Concerning Sending Communications
with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, 17
Drake, Frank: altruistic behaviors, 170;
Ames interstellar communication
lecture series, 4; Ames science
workshops on SETI role, 7; birthday
celebration, 1n1; career of, 13;
Commission 51, IAU role, 16; Drake
Equation values, 207; efciency of
signals compared to interstellar travel,
1011; Father of SETI role, 1n1; Green
Bank SETI conference, 25, 49, 50;
HRMS inauguration speech, 19; math
and science as universal language, 107
8n37; message design and construction,
90, 173; NASA SETI Program role,
1n1, 8, 12; NRC astronomy and
astrophysics report role, 6; Project
Ozma experiment, xiii, 1n1, 2, 2425,
49, 50, 96n3; radar and television
transmissions and revealing information
about Earth, 67; SETI Institute role,
1n1, 13, 18; SETI research by, 15, 21,
41, 187; SETI Science Working Group
role, 10; USSoviet conference on
extraterrestrial intelligence, 52
Drake Equation: anthropology-related
discussions about, xvii; challenges and
limitations of, xxviixxviii; creation of,
2, 25, 205; cultural components of, 52,
6263; defnition and concept of, xvii,
xxvii, 2526, 25n5, 49, 98, 2056,
208; estimated parameter values, range
of, xxviixxviii, 205, 20710, 207n3,
22628; fraction of planets with
intelligent life, 205, 206, 207, 21017;
fraction of planets with intelligent life
able and willing to communicate, 205,
206, 207, 210, 217228; Green Bank
conference and proposal for using, 25,
49, 50; guesses about parameter values,
206; online calculators, 206; opinions
about validity of, 32; star formation
rate, 206, 207, 208; stars with planets,
27, 206, 20810
Dumas, Stephane, 181
Dunbar, Robin, 227
Dutil, Yvan, 181
Dyson, Freeman, 52
E
Earth: compendium of life, mind, and
society of, 178; location of, revealing
information on, xxvi, 67; no clues to
location of in messages, 231; number of
species on, 217; Principle of Mediocrity
and specialness of, 211; super-Earth
planets, 20910
Earth Speaks project, xxix, xxixxxx
Echolocation, 16263
Ecological dominancesocial competition
hypothesis, 215
Edelson, Bob, 9, 10
Eerie Silence, Te (Davies), 184
Egypt: Central Civilization, 226;
decoding ancient hieroglyphics from,
xviiixix, 58, 68, 7071, 7374, 124;
infuence on other civilizations by,
225; inventions from, 225; pyramids,
construction of, 219, 249250
283
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Einstein, Albert, 24
Eiseley, Loren, 200
Electromagnetic spectrum: interference
and signal detection, 18, 20, 2728,
31; microwave region, 5, 78, 24, 25,
31; radio region, 2; ranges of, 239;
spectrum analyzers and spectrometers,
78, 1314, 35; water-hole region, 5,
25, 31
Electronic Human Relations Area File
(eHRAF), 225n55
Elephants, 215n28
Ellis, George, 127
Embree, John, 13536, 135n11, 136n13
Engineers, 33, 37
Essentialism, 165, 165n7
Ethnocentrism, 100
Ethnographic analogies, xxixxii, 11618
Etruscan language, 75
Europe: Central Civilization, 226;
classical Greek science, translation
of and interest in, 71; Iroquois
relationship with, 150; Paleolithic
cave art in, 115, 116; Renaissance
and recovery of ancient knowledge,
xviixviii, 67, 68, 6972; stone tools,
recognition of by people in, 11617;
trade between China and, 14849
Evolution: animal evolution, 54,
21415, 22627; chance and, 197,
19899, 204; conditions necessary for,
54; convergent evolution, 19798,
199200, 2023; cultural evolution,
xvii, 4950, 54, 56, 6163, 169,
171, 171n18, 225; Darwins theory,
critiques of, 19293; Darwins theory
of, 19293, 194, 196; disagreement
among scientists about, xxvixxvii, 192;
divergent evolution, 198; evolutionary
synthesis, xxvixxvii, 192, 19496;
evolutionary synthesis, acceptance
of, 192, 199; extraterrestrial life and
evolutionary synthesis, 196204;
genetics and, 19496; heredity and
evolutionary synthesis, 193; human
evolution and intelligence, 21415,
22627; intelligence as product
of, 199; macroevolution, 2034;
microevolution, 2034; mutations,
193, 196, 19799; speciation, 196;
technical civilizations, evolution of,
5253, 62; Universal Darwinism, 203;
variation and natural selection, 19293,
194, 195, 196
Evpatoria Planetary Radar, xxvi, 181
Exobiology: commentators on, xxvi, 192;
distinctions among astrobiology, SETI,
and, 40n56; efect of discoveries on
research, 122; NASA division for, 3, 8,
8n15, 12, 13
Exomissionaries, 184
Exoplanets, 32, 42, 42n63, 44n67, 45,
20810, 247, 249, 250
Extraterrestrial civilizations and culture:
age and lifespan of, 3334, 98, 102;
aggressive, exploitative, or hostile
societies, xxvi, 67, 144, 15657,
18586; capacities and characteristics
of, 16164, 169174; colonization
of space by, 3435, 35n34, 5758;
Cultural Aspects of SETI (CASETI)
Workshops, 17, 5960; cultural
contacts, study of, 5152, 53, 62;
cultural evolution, xvii, 4950, 54,
56, 6163, 171, 171n18, 225; dead
civilizations, messages from, xviii;
development of, xiv; ethnology, cultural
diferences, and communication, xxviii,
229230, 23133; ethology, biological
diferences, and communication,
xxviii, 229233; evolution of, xiv,
xvii, xxivxxv, xxiv n7, 4950; human
284
Index
evolution, relevance to understanding,
xvi; multiple cultures, xxiv; nature
of, inferences and impressions about,
xxiii, 67, 138141; number of, 1011,
2526, 25n5, 49, 98, 205; number
of capable of communicating, 2;
observational data and conclusions
about, 254; philosophical openness
and contact with, 23536; political
society development, 231; technological
adolescence, survival of, xvi, 77;
technological superiority of, xxiv,
3334, 102; understanding culturally-
specifc messages, xviii, 138141;
unitary culture and technologically
advanced civilizations, xxivxxv,
17072; waiting for visits from, 3334.
See also Extraterrestrials/extraterrestrial
intelligence.
Extraterrestrial Culture Day, 182
Extraterrestrials/extraterrestrial
intelligence: aggressive, exploitative,
or hostile societies, xxvi, 67, 144,
15657, 18586; anatomical and
physiological structure of, 11, 14344,
19192, 200204; armchair and
distant research, 137141; avoidance
of contact with, importance of,
231, 236; belief in, basis for, 3536;
biological diferences, ethology, and
communication with, xxviii, 229233;
capacities and characteristics of,
16164, 169174; cognitive abilities
of, 16162, 164; colonization of space
by, 3435, 35n34, 5758; contact
with, communicating information
about, 14041, 254n5; context for
identifcation and understanding,
xxixxii, 118120; cultural and societal
impact of discovery of, xvi, 17, 5152,
51n5, 53, 6263, 65, 97, 9798n8;
curiosity about, 23, 95; development
of, xiv, xxvi; embodied intelligence,
238; encounter with, analogies from
colonial cultural contacts, 144152,
15455, 15759; encounter with,
probability of, 153; encounter with,
speculation about initial, 138141,
144; evidence of nonexistence, 57;
evolution of and evolutionary synthesis,
xiv, xvii, 196204, 23031; existence
of, disagreement among scientists
about, xxvixxvii; existence of, rational
decision about, 233; high-information
contact with, 6061; human- and
Earth-based impressions about, xxiii,
99101, 13233, 138141, 19192,
226, 23738, 254; human reactions to
discovery of, 53; image management
by, xxiii; images and intentions of,
14344; information-trading with,
15557, 158; interstellar travel by, 34;
opinions about existence of, 11, 3137;
parallels between humans and, xxvi,
19192; physical contact with, 60, 62,
144, 145; physiological senses, 232;
post-detection protocols, 1617, 36,
18788, 189; preconceptions about,
xxii, 99101, 122, 13233, 138141;
probability of existence of, 11, 3133,
35, 99100, 122, 143, 15253, 196,
198, 200204; probes and interactions
with, 15557, 15859; radio contact
with, 60, 62, 69; recognition of
through ethnographic analogies, xxi
xxii, 11618; sensory modalities, xxvii;
sensory organs and capabilities, 161,
16263, 164, 166, 169, 171, 173;
value of detection of, xvi, 11. See also
Extraterrestrial civilizations and culture;
Intelligence.
285
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Eyes and eyesight. See Vision, eyes, and
eyesight.
F
Farmer, Steve, 110
Faulks, Zen, 35
Federal Aviation Administration, 35
Feinberg, Gerald, 202
Fermi, Enrico, 3334
Fermi paradox, xxii, 3334, 57, 58, 62,
119
Field Report (Astronomy Survey
Committee report), 12
Finney, Ben, 5758, 59, 60, 63, 99,
11011
Fisher, R. A., 194, 195
Flannery, Kent, 5253
Fletcher, James, 6, 17
Flinn, Mark, 215
Fossil records, 197
France: French language, 8081, 87;
Iroquois relationship with, 150; SETI
research in, 15, 44
Frazer, James, 131
Freudenthal, Hans, 76, 17677
Friedman, Louis, 44n67
Friedrich, Johannes, 9394
G
Galton, Francis, 193
Gardiner, Alan, 73
Gardiner, Howard, 21213
Garn, Jake, 28
Gas-giant planets, 209
Geary, David, 215
Geertz, Cliford, 115
Geladas, 227
Genetics and the Origin of Species
(Dobzhansky), 195
Geology, challenges and limitations of,
251
Germany, SETI research in, 15
Gibbons, John, 37
Gold, Tommy, 52
Golden Fleece Award, xvi, 26, 66
Goldin, Daniel, 38, 4546, 45n74
Goodenough, Ward, 21819
Gorer, Geofrey, 138, 138n20
Gorillas, 213, 217
Gould, Stephen Jay, 31, 2023
Great Britain: Hong Kong control by,
149; Iroquois relationship with, 150;
Mori relationship with, xxiv, 15152,
15859; Singapore, establishment of,
15455; trade between China and, 149
Greece: classical Greek science,
translation of and interest in, 71; Linear
B as ancient form of Greek, xx, 85; one-
way transmission of information from,
67; preservation of scholarly works by
Islamic scholars, xviixviii, 67, 7071;
transmission of knowledge from ancient
Greece, xviixviii, 67, 68, 6972, 221,
224
Greenstein, Jesse L., 6, 7
Grether, Daniel, 210
Grifths, Lynn, 17, 19
Grotefend, Georg Friedrich, 84
Gulkis, Sam, 9, 10, 13, 18
Guthke, Karl, 60
Guthrie, Stewart, 128
H
Haddock, Fred, 7
Haldane, J. B. S., 194, 195
Harris, Marvin, 133
Harrison, Albert, 60, 152
Heidmann, Jean, 6869, 104, 1056
Heilbron, John, 60
286
Index
Henry, Todd, 210
Herbig, George, 7
Hertz, Heinrich, 24
Heterogeneity, balanced, 158, 158n29
Hewlett, William, 4142
Heyns, Roger, 17
Hieroglyphics: assumptions about and
decoding of, 68, 73, 7475, 77, 8485,
85n8; categories of signs, 87; decoding
ancient Egyptian, xviiixix, 58, 68,
7071, 7374, 124; decoding Mayan
hieroglyphics, xviiixix, 58, 6768,
7275, 77, 11011, 124; decoding of
and lessons for extraterrestrial message
decoding, xviiixix, 58, 6869, 7172,
7678, 1069, 11011; ideographic
glyphs, 73, 7475, 77, 84; pictographic
glyphs, 73, 75. See also Languages.
High-Resolution Microwave Survey
(HRMS), 1920, 23, 28, 2829, 29,
30, 3637, 40, 180
Hive intelligence, 218
Hofman, Tom, 184
Hong Kong, 149
Horowitz, Paul, 10, 15, 27, 4344
Howells, William, 200201
Hoyle, Fred, 96n3, 218
Huang, S. S., 96n3
Hubble Space Telescope, xvi, 38, 38n49
Humanities. See Social scientists and
humanities scholars.
Humans: archaeological signs of human
activity, 114; colonization of space
by, 58; compendium of life, mind,
and society on Earth, 178; cultural
and societal impact of discovery of
extraterrestrial intelligence, xvi, 17,
5152, 51n5, 53, 6263, 65, 97,
9798n8; ecological dominancesocial
competition hypothesis, 215; genetic
similarities between animals and, 230;
intelligence and evolution of, 21415,
22627; living in groups, benefts of,
227; messages for human successors,
xxvi, 175; Neanderthals, 25254,
254n5; number of Hominoidea species,
217; parallels between extraterrestrials
and, xxvi, 19192; reactions to
discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence,
53; vision of, 239
Huntress, Wesley, 38, 3940
Hutchins, Edwin, 241
Huygens, Christiaan, 19192
Hydrogen, emission frequency of, xiii,
5, 25
Hydroxyl, emission frequency of, 5, 25
I
Ikegami, Eiko, 134
Inca civilization, 222, 225
Induction, 85n8
Indus script, 10910, 110n45
Information economy, 219
Information theory and understanding
communications, xxxxi, 83n6, 1056
Intelligence: of animals, 21314, 23738;
counting methods, 16364; defnition
and concept of, xxvii, 21113, 226;
development and evolution of, xvi,
xvii, 98, 21417, 22627; forms and
types of, xxvii, 21213; historical
civilizations, technology development
potential, and, 22122; hive
intelligence, 218; inferring intelligence
and archaeology, 11316, 12729;
inferring intelligence and symbol
use, 12325; intellectual culture and
context and recognition of, 118120;
measurements of, xxvii, 21213;
planets with intelligent life, 205, 206,
207, 21017, 22627; planets with
287
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
intelligent life able and willing to
communicate, 205, 206, 207, 210,
217228; as product of evolution, 199;
recognition of, 11618; recognition
of our planet by extraterrestrial
astronomers, 179; as social tool,
215; technology creation and, xxvii,
32, 205, 213, 21517, 22628. See
also Extraterrestrials/extraterrestrial
intelligence.
Intelligent Life in the Universe (Shklovskii
and Sagan), 3, 1078n37
International Academy of Astronautics
(IAA), 3, 1617, 176
International Astronautical Congress
(IAC), 16
International Astronautical Federation
(IAF), 17, 59, 66, 6869
International Astronomical Union (IAU),
16, 59
International Institute of Space Law,
1617
Interstellar Migration and the Human
Experience (Finney and Jones), 58, 62
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 218
Irish culture, 224
Iroquois Confederacy, xxiii, 131,
149150, 15758
Italy, SETI research in, 15, 44
J
Jackson, Francis, 201
Jansky, Karl, 224
Japan: age of culture and long history
of, 135, 135n11; Central Civilization,
226; counting method in, 16364;
cultural complexity, 224; interpretation
of culture, xxiixxiii, 13238, 132n2,
132n4, 137n19, 139, 140, 141; Meiji
period, 148; policy for trade, 15758;
samurai warriors, 14647, 148; SETI
research in, 15; sociocultural changes
in, xxiii, 14648, 158
Japanese Americans, interviews with, xxii,
134, 136, 137
Javanese culture, 158n29, 224
Jenkin, Fleeming, 193
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL):
Columbus Day initiation of search,
18; leadership of SETI Program, 9,
10; Murray role at, 7, 9; NASA SETI
Program role, 89, 13, 26; number of
people involved in SETI, 18; search
methods for signals, 89, 14, 29; SETI
research by, 27; SETI Science Working
Group, 910; signal detection systems,
9, 14
Johannsen, Wilhelm, 193, 195
Jonas, David, xxvii, 204
Jonas, Doris, xxvii, 204
Jones, Eric, 58
K
Kantrowitz, Arthur, 7
Kardashev, Nikolai, 23, 27
Kayap, 220
Kellermann, Kenneth, 7, 10
Kelly, Kevin, 35, 39n51
Kenniston, Ken, 60
KEO satellite project, xxvi, 185, 188,
189190
Kepler mission, 43, 45, 15253, 208,
208n8, 20910
Kircher, Athanasius, 73
Klein, Harold Chuck: Ames
Committee on Interstellar
Communications role, 6; Exobiology
Division chief, support for Billingham
as, 8, 8n15; Exobiology Division role,
3, 13; Life Sciences Division role, 4;
288
Index
retirement of, 13; support for Ames
SETI Program, 7, 8
Klein, Michael Mike: HRMS
observation summary, 20; JPL SETI
Program role, 10, 13, 14, 19; NASA
SETI Program Plan development, 14;
NASA SETI Program role, 19
Kline, Michelle, 22021
Kluckhohn, Clyde, 218
Knorozov, Yuri, 75
Knowledge, nature and scope of, 105
Kober, Alice, 85
Korean culture, 224
Kraus, John, 15
Kroeber, A. L., 218
Kuhn, Tomas, 119
L
La Barre, Weston, 138, 138n20
Lakatos, Imre, 119
Languages: bilingual and multilingual
texts and decoding unknown languages,
xviii, xix, xx, 68, 74; components
of, identifcation of, xx; counting
methods, 16364; cultural context of,
108; decoding dead languages, xvii;
familiarity with specifc language and
transcription of unknown language, xx,
85, 103, 10611, 12425; interstellar
language, 76, 177, 181; math and
science as universal language, xviii,
6869, 7677, 8990, 1078n37,
1079, 124, 139, 159160, 164, 177,
179, 181; music as universal language,
159, 164; process for deciphering
ancient texts, xx, 8285, 85n8, 9394;
successful decipherment, 10911;
translation of, xviiixx, 7576, 103;
type of writing system, identifcation
of, 8485; unsuccessful decipherment,
10910, 111. See also Hieroglyphics.
Last Supper, Te (da Vinci), 11516
Lederberg, Joshua, 7, 54
Lee, Richard B., 5253
Levy, Marion, 147
Lewis, John, 7
Light, speed of, xvii, 24, 154, 176, 180,
186187
Lilly, John, 50
Lind, Andrew W., 136
Linear A, xxi, 10910
Linear B, xx, 83n5, 84, 85
Lineweaver, Charles, 210
Lingua Cosmica (Lincos), 76, 177, 181
Linguistic anthropology, 61, 62
Linscott, Ivan, 10, 1314
Lions, 215n28
Living Systems Teory, 60
Lovejoy, C. Owen, 202
Lubbock, Percy, 88
M
Mori, xxiv, 15152, 15859
MacGowan, Roger, 202
Machol, Bob, 13
Machtley, Ronald, 28
Macroevolution, 2034
Malay Peninsula and Singapore, 15455
Marconi, Guglielmo, 24, 179180
Marcy, Geofrey, 2089
Mark, Hans, 4, 6, 8, 11
Mars: exploration of, 251, 252; Mars
Exploration Rovers, 251; Mars rock
meteorite, 45; signals from, 24; Project
Viking, 3, 12
Mathematics: communication with as
universal language and understanding
of messages based on, xviii, 6869,
7677, 8990, 1078n37, 1079, 124,
289
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
139, 159160, 164, 181; objective
existence of or invention of human
mind, 127
May, Julian, 14344
Maya civilization: collapse of classic era,
72; culture of, 72; descendants from,
7273; history of, 72; number and
calendar systems, xviii, xix, 68, 74, 77;
technology development by, 108
Mayan language, decoding ancient
hieroglyphics from, xviiixix, 58,
6768, 7275, 77, 11011, 124
Mayr, Ernst, xxvixxvii, 3233, 192, 194,
19596, 199200
McConnell, Brian, 102, 1078n37
McNeill, William H., 5253, 108
Meadowcroft Rockshelter, 12122
Media and press, communicating
discoveries through, 254n5
Mediocrity, Principle of, 211, 221, 228
Megachannel Extraterrestrial Assay
(META), 15, 27
Memoirs of a Spacewoman (Mitchison),
xxvii
Mendel, Gregor, 193
Message from Earth, A, 183
Messages: anticryptographic properties
of, 82, 82n4, 103; art, messages as
works of, xxiv n8; concerns about
sending, 18589; control over messages
sent, 18788; cryptology and secret
messages, 83, 8889, 88n11; culturally-
specifc messages, understanding of,
xviii, 138141; dead civilizations,
messages from, xviii; deciphering
extraterrestrial messages, xvii, xx,
62, 6769, 7172, 7678, 9596,
100103, 11011, 154, 235; decoding
ancient hieroglyphics and assumptions
about extraterrestrial messages, xviii
xix, 58, 6869, 7172, 7678, 124;
design and construction of, 53, 61, 62,
8182, 8794, 1012, 1046, 12425,
132, 140, 17274, 176185, 24647,
247n15, 248, 249250; difculty
of decipherment, 11011; fractal
messages, 235; honesty of messages,
xxiii n6; human interests and values
and subject of, xxvi, 17274, 18085,
189190; information theory and
understanding communications, xx
xxi, 83n6, 1056; intent of messages,
general sense of, xxii, 94; interpretation
and meaning of, xiv, xxv, 7982,
17274; interpretation of, challenges
of, xxviii, 7981, 139, 25152; length
of time to reach Earth, xiv, xvii, 67,
141, 154, 176; length of time to reach
planets, 18687; listening for messages
from extraterrestrials, xxv, 34, 67, 101,
179180; multiple messages sent over
a period of time, xxiv n7, 94, 178,
235; obstacles to interpretation of
meaning of, xxixxii, 10911; one-way
transmission of information, xvii, 67;
physics, biophysics, sensory biophysics,
and, 239240; recognizing signals as,
xx, xxixxii, 8182, 83, 8788, 106,
15354; redundant information and
understanding messages, xxi, 1056;
resources for deciphering meaning
of, 235, 249250; sending messages,
opinions and perceptions about,
67, 101; showing and telling and
interpretation of, 8889; subject of
messages sent by humans, xxiii, xxiii n6,
xxiv n78, 6869, 74, 1046, 1079,
12527, 132, 140, 17274, 17578,
18085; successful decipherment,
10911; successful reception of, 9394;
transmission of, 67, 178184; updates
to, 179. See also Communication;
290
Index
Visual communication, symbols, and
signs.
Messaging extraterrestrial intelligence
(METI), 175. See also Active SETI.
Michael, Donald N., 51n5
Michaud, Michael A. G., 132, 141,
18586, 187, 188
Microevolution, 2034
Microwave Observing Project (MOP),
13, 19, 28, 180
Microwave region, electromagnetic
spectrum, 5, 78, 24, 25, 31
Middle East, 226
Migration: colonization of space, 3435,
35n34, 5758; interstellar migration,
impossibility of, 66; interstellar
migration conference and publication,
58, 62; Polynesian migrations, 57,
6566; space migration, study of, 66;
spread of advanced technology, 22526
Mikulski, Barbara, 20
Minsky, Marvin, 52, 16364
Missionaries, 184
Mitchison, Naomi, xxvii
Montagu, Ashley, 53
Monte Verde site, 121
Montezuma, 14546
Moon, archives on, xxvi
Moore, Gordon, 42
Moore, Patrick, 201
Morgan, Lewis Henry, 131
Morgan, T. H., 194
Morris, George, 10
Morris, John, 136
Morrison, Philip: Ames science
workshops on SETI role, 7, 54; article
by and recommendation and support
for SETI research, 8, 11, 24, 26, 49, 50,
96n3; Project Cyclops, 4; deciphering
extraterrestrial messages, 62; math
and science as universal language,
1078n37; radio region for signals from
extraterrestrials, paper on, 2; Te Search
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, 54; US
Soviet conference on extraterrestrial
intelligence, 52
Muller, H. J., xxvixxvii, 33, 33n26, 192,
194, 19899
Murdock, George, 22224, 228
Murray, Bruce, 7, 89, 44n67
Murray, Elyse, 13
Music: communication with as universal
language, 159, 164; Concert for ET,
18182; objective existence of harmony
or invention of human mind, 127;
theremin, 18182; Voyager spacecraft
recordings, 17778
N
Nagel, Tomas, 162
Naroll, Raoul, 220
NASA: Astrobiology Program, 4546,
46n77; biology study by employees,
4546, 45n74; budget and funding
for, xvi, 11, 3738, 38n47, 41, 48;
education programs on SETI, 60;
Exobiology Division, 12; Life Sciences
Division, Ofce of Space Science and
Application, 12, 19, 28, 40; mission
of, 3, 8, 39n51; political battles over
programs, 3839; Science Mission
Directorate, 46n79; Solar System
Exploration Division, 19, 27, 28, 40
NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI), 46,
46n77
NASA Origins Program, 4546
NASA SETI Program: Ames as lead
Center, 12, 26; anthropological
approach to research, 6568; beginning
of, 38, 26, 5354; Billingham role
in, 121; budget and funding for, xvi,
291
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
6, 9, 1011, 12, 13, 14, 15, 1718,
19, 2021, 23, 2630, 26n9, 3739,
38n47, 39n51, 41, 48, 66; cancellation
of, xvi, 2, 11, 12, 2021, 23, 2930,
31n18; cancellation of, political
story behind, 3741; Columbus Day
initiation of search, xvi, 18, 19, 23, 28,
28, 29, 30; Congressional opposition
to, xvi, 1011, 20, 23, 2627,
2829, 33, 39n51, 66; development
and evolution of, xvxvi, 2630;
Drake role in, 1n1; High-Resolution
Microwave Survey (HRMS), 1920,
23, 28, 2829, 29, 30, 3637, 40,
180; leadership and management of,
9, 18, 19, 37; Microwave Observing
Project (MOP), 13, 19, 28, 180;
number of people involved in, 18;
observation summary, 20; program
approval process, 1718; Program Plan
development, 14; public interest in,
11; recommendations for, 10; search
methods for signals, 89, 14, 29,
3637, 180; SETI Program Ofce, 8;
SETI Science Working Group, 910,
12; signal detection research, 65; signal
detection systems, 9, 1315; signal
detection systems and observational
process, 1820; support for, xvi, 8,
1011, 23, 2627, 31, 3839. See also
Ames Research Center.
National Academy of Sciences: Green
Bank SETI conference, 25, 49, 50;
opinion about SETI research, 4041,
4041n58; Radio Astronomy Panel,
31; Space Science Board meeting, 2;
support for NASA SETI Program,
xvi, 31; USSoviet conference on
extraterrestrial intelligence, xvi, 5,
5253
National Aeronautics and Space Act, 51
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
(NRAO), Green Bank: Project Ozma
experiment, xiii, 1n1, 2, 2425, 49, 50,
96n3; Project Phoenix research, 42
National Research Council (NRC):
anthropological approach to SETI,
support for research on, 58, 66;
astronomy and astrophysics reports,
6, 18
National Science Foundation (NSF), 43
National Security Agency, 35
Native Americans: adoption of European
technology by, 150; tool use by, 117,
119. See also Iroquois Confederacy.
Naugle, John, 6
Nazca Lines, 120
Neanderthals, reconstruction of, 25254,
254n5
Newell, Homer, 6
New Mexico Extraterrestrial Culture Day,
182
Nieman, C. Wells, 90
Nieman, H. W., 90
Nonprevalence of Humanoids, Te
(Simpson), 19697
NOVA Origins series, 206, 2078
O
Oceania, 22021
Octopus, 213
Oehrle, R. T., 76, 177
Ohio State University Radio Observatory
(OSURO), 27
Oliver, Bernard Barney: Ames
Committee on Interstellar
Communications role, 6; Ames
interstellar communication lecture
series, 4; Ames science workshops
on SETI role, 7; Project Cyclops
and report, 46, 8, 26; death of, 46;
292
Index
efciency of signals compared to
interstellar travel, 1011; funding
for SETI research, 30; Hewlett-
Packard role, 12, 26; HRMS program
Columbus Day initiation of search, 30;
interstellar migration, impossibility of,
66; interstellar travel and colonization
of space by extraterrestrials, 34; math
and science as universal language,
1078n37; NASA SETI Program
Plan development, 14; NASA SETI
Program role, 8, 10, 1213, 18, 26;
search methods for signals, 89; SETI
Institute formation, 13; SETI Institute
research, support for, 42, 46; spacecraft
with messages aboard, purpose of, 178;
Space Science Board meeting role, 2;
Summer Faculty Fellowship Program
role, 45
Olsen, Ed, 10
Opium smuggling and First Opium War,
149
Opportunity rover, 251
Oral narrative tradition, 17879
Orangutans, 213, 217
Orcas, 215n28
Order of the Dolphin, 25, 32
Ordway, Frederick, 202
Origin of Species, Te (Darwin), 19293
Osborn, Henry Fairfeld, 200, 253, 254
Other Senses, Other Worlds (Jonas and
Jonas), xxvii
Ozma, Project, xiii, xvixvii, 1n1, 2,
2425, 49, 50, 96n3
P
Packard, David, 42
Pakistan, 158n29
Paleolithic cave art, 115, 116
Paleontologists: development of
intelligent life, opinions about, xxvi
xxvii, 192, 19697, 2012; training in
evolutionary theory, 195
Palmer, Craig T., 203
Palmer, Jason, 18384
Passive SETI, 101, 180, 186, 24748,
248. See also Search for Extraterrestrial
intelligence (SETI).
Patterns of Culture (Benedict), xxiii,
13738
Pauling, Linus, 31
Pearson, Karl, 193
Peirce, Charles Sanders, 8485, 85n8,
8688, 91, 94
Perry, Matthew, 148
Perry, William James, 225
Pesek, Rudolph, 3
Peterson, Allen, 10, 1314
Philippe, Jean-Marc, xxvi, 185, 189190
Phillips, Graham, 18283
Phoenix, Project, 30, 39n51, 4143
Phoenix Mars Lander, 251, 252
Physical context and archaeological
research, 12022
Physicists, SETI research by, xiv, 33
Pierson, Tom, 13, 18
Pioneer spacecraft, xxvi, 14, 177, 190
Planetary scientists, attitude toward
SETI, 40
Planetary Society, 27, 4344, 44n67
Planets: discovery of Earth-like planets,
15354; exoplanets, 32, 42, 42n63,
44n67, 45, 20810, 247, 249, 250; gas-
giant planets, 209; with intelligent life,
205, 206, 207, 21017; with intelligent
life able and willing to communicate,
205, 206, 207, 210, 217228; stars
with planets, 27, 206, 20810; super-
Earth planets, 20910
Plotinus, xix, 73
293
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Polo, Marco, 148
Polynesian migrations, 57, 6566
Pomianek, Christina, 203
Postcard Earth message, xxix, 24647,
249
Press and media, communicating
discoveries through, 254n5
Probes, 15557, 15859
Projects. See Argus, Project; Big Ear SETI
Project at Ohio State University Radio
Observatory (OSURO); Cyclops,
Project and report; Dorothy, Project;
Microwave Observing Project (MOP);
Ozma, Project; Phoenix, Project;
Sentinel, Project; SETI@home Project;
Viking, Project.
Provost, Caterina, 22224, 228
Proxmire, William, xvi, 1011, 2627,
39, 66
Pyramids, 219, 249250
Q
Quasars, 27
Quetzalcoatl, 14546
R
Radio and TV transmitters: broadcast
of signals into space, 24, 34; broadcast
of signals into space and revealing
information about Earth, xxvi, 67,
17273; surplus radiation leaks from,
xxv
Radio astronomy: attitude of radio
astronomers toward SETI, 3, 9, 40;
discovery and beginning of, 22526;
SETI research with, 14, 15, 23, 2425,
26, 31
Radio Astronomy Laboratory, UC
Berkeley, 13, 43
Radio region, electromagnetic spectrum,
2
Radio telescope/antenna array facilities:
Allen Telescope Array, 6, 4243,
43n66, 47; Ames telescopes, 9; Deep
Space Network, 9, 14, 1820, 26,
29; Evpatoria Planetary Radar, xxvi,
181; Parkes radio telescope, 42, 44;
Square Kilometer Array, 6. See also
Arecibo Observatory; National Radio
Astronomy Observatory (NRAO),
Green Bank.
Radio telescope/antenna arrays, 24;
construction of by Reber, 224; Project
Cyclops, 56, 8, 26; detection and
collection of signals with, 24, 180;
development of, 22425; interference
and signal detection, 18, 20,
2728, 31; passive SETI instead of
communication, 24748, 248; search
methods for signals, 89, 14; signal
detection systems, 9
Radio waves: discovery of, 224;
interplanetary communication with,
24; range of, 18687; speed of, 24,
18687
Rafes, Stamford, 15455
Raulin-Cerceau, Florence, 179
Raup, David, 202
Ravens, 231
RDF Digital, 183
Reasoning, cabling method of, xxii,
12223, 128
Reber, Grote, 224
Reciprocity, 159
Religion and spirituality, 12527, 128,
16162, 184
Renaissance: Egyptian hieroglyphics,
understanding of, xix; recovery of
ancient knowledge during, xviixviii,
67, 68, 6972
294
Index
Roberts, John M., 219
Rock art, 24344, 244, 244n13
Rome and Roman Empire: infuence of
other civilizations on, 224; infuence
on other civilizations by, 224, 225;
inventions from, 221; radio-telescope
development, 22425; Star Trek episode
about, 222n50
Rongorongo script, xxi, 10910
Rood, Robert, 3436, 35n34
Rosetta Stone, xviii, xix, xx, 68, 74, 76,
85, 1079
Rummel, John, 17, 19, 30, 41, 41n60
Russell, Dale, 2012
Russell, Mary Doria, 61
Russia. See Soviet Union and Russia.
Ryang, Sonia, 134, 135
S
Sagan, Carl: Ames interstellar
communication lecture series, 4; Ames
science workshops on SETI role, 7;
colonization of space, 35; Contact,
45n70, 102; Drake Equation values,
207, 207n3, 208; education and
training of, 33, 33n26; extraterrestrial
intelligence, value of detection of, xvi;
human successors, messages for, 175;
Intelligent Life in the Universe, 3, 107
8n37; international cooperation and
systematic SETI, support for, 12; math
and science as universal language, 107,
1078n37, 108; Muller relationship
with, 199; petition to support SETI
research, 12, 31, 33; Planetary Society
founding, 27, 44n67; probability
of extraterrestrial intelligence, 33;
Shklovskii collaboration with, 3;
support for NASA SETI Program, 11,
2627, 31; support for SETI research,
31, 31n18; USSoviet conference on
extraterrestrial intelligence, 52
Saint-Gelais, Richard, 106
Samurai warriors, 14647, 148
Satellites, xxvi, 185
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 86
Science: classical Greek science,
translation of and interest in, 71;
communication with as universal
language and understanding of
messages based on, xviii, 6869,
7677, 1078n37, 1079, 124, 139,
177, 179, 181; theory-laden data and
assumptions, 119
Science fction, 14344
Scientists and scientifc community:
attitude toward astrobiology research,
4547, 45n70; attitude toward
SETI, 1n1, 6, 23, 3137, 4041,
99100, 100n13, 14344, 15253;
Congressional member backgrounds,
37; development of intelligent life,
opinions about, xxvixxvii, 192;
interaction between natural scientists
and social scientists, 50
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(SETI): advances in and search
technology development, xiii, 44,
9697, 190; analogy to anthropological
research, xiv, xxiixxv, 51, 6061,
99, 13133, 144, 252; analogy to
archaeological research, xiv, xviixxii,
99, 11314; attitude of scientifc
community toward, 1n1, 6, 23,
3137, 4041, 99100, 100n13,
14344, 15253; background of
researchers involved in, xiv; beginning
of and early projects, xiii, xv, 1n1,
23, 2425, 49, 5052, 96n3, 179;
challenges and limitations of, 25152;
Cultural Aspects of SETI (CASETI)
295
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Workshops, 17, 5960; distinctions
among astrobiology, exobiology, and,
40n56; faith as basis for, 206; funding
for experiments and projects, xvi, 30,
4647, 143; historical perspectives on,
xvxvii; history of, 23, 1517, 2430;
intellectual culture and context and,
118120; international cooperation
and systematic program for, 12, 1517;
observational data and conclusions
about, 254; opponents to, winning over
after explanation of SETI, 40; passive
discovery instead of communication,
101, 180, 186, 24748, 248; politics
and support for, 47; predictions about
fnding, 97; public interest in, 11,
143, 178; SETI@home Project, 44,
153, 153n37; SETI begins at home,
111, 144; SETI term, proposal for, 7;
social scientist role in SETI research,
5058, 9799, 111; support and
recommendation for research, 8, 10,
11, 12, 18, 24, 26, 31, 31n18, 33,
49, 50, 96n3; targeted searching,
249; technological limitations and,
15354; unity of knowledge and, 63;
value of, 35; writings and publications
about, 1415, 16, 17, 5051, 67, 96,
96nn34. See also Active SETI; NASA
SETI Program.
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Te
(Morrison, Billingham, and Wolfe), 54
Search for Extraterrestrial Radio
Emissions from Nearby Developed
Intelligent Populations (SERENDIP),
15, 27, 44
Seeger, Charles, 8, 14
Semiosis, 243. See also Visual
communication, symbols, and signs.
Sensory organs and capabilities, 161,
16263, 164, 166, 169, 171, 173
Sentinel, Project, 15, 27
SETI@home Project, 44, 153, 153n37
SETI Institute: Allen Telescope Array,
4243, 43n66, 47; astrobiological
research at, 46; Carl Sagan Center/
Center for SETI Research, 46; Drake
role at, 1n1, 13; founding of, 13, 27;
funding for experiments and projects,
30, 39n51, 46; message design and
construction by, 53; Project Phoenix,
30, 39n51, 4143; reorganization of,
46; research at, 18, 21, 30, 4143;
search methods for signals, 30; unifed
knowledge curriculum for schools, 63
SETI League, 5, 21, 44
Shannon, Claude, xxxxi, 1056
Shapiro, Robert, 202
Shklovskii, Iosif, 3, 27, 1078n37
Shostak, Seth, 102, 1045, 126, 14041
Showing and telling, 8889, 88n12
Siamese culture, 224
Signals: ability to send, 22425;
accidental, xxv; auditory signals, xxv;
concerns about sending, 18589;
detection and collection of, xiiixiv,
24, 96, 179180; detection of, systems
for, 9, 1315, 1820; efciency of
signals compared to interstellar travel,
5, 1011, 153; frequency of, xiii, 5,
78; intentional signals, transmission of
from Earth, xxvxxvi, 101, 175190;
interference and signal detection, 18,
20, 2728, 31; investigation of strange
signals, 36; length of search for, 3637;
length of time to reach Earth, xiv,
xvii, 67, 141, 154, 176; length of time
to reach planets, 18687; listening
for messages from extraterrestrials,
xxv, 34, 67, 101, 179180; one-way
transmission of information, xvii,
67; optimism about discovery of,
296
Index
36; post-detection protocols, 1617,
36, 18788, 189; processing of, xv,
36, 25152; recognizing signals as
messages, xx, xxixxii, 8182, 83,
8788, 106, 15354; resources for
searching for, 249250; response to
by extraterrestrials, consensus on,
xxv; response to from extraterrestrials,
government role in, 53; search methods
for, 89, 14, 29, 30, 3637, 180,
249; speed of light and, xvii, 24, 154,
176, 180, 18687; transmission of,
178184; unintentional signals, 24, 34.
See also Communication; Messages.
Signs. See Visual communication,
symbols, and signs.
Simpson, George Gaylord, xxvixxvii, 54,
192, 194, 195, 19697, 199, 202
Simpson, Ruth, 121
Singapore, 15455
Singer, Philip, 56, 57
Smith, G. Elliot, 225, 253
Snow, C. P., 50
Social Implications of the Detection of an
Extraterrestrial Civilization, 17
Social scientists and humanities scholars:
assessment of cultural and societal
impact of discovery of extraterrestrial
intelligence, 5152, 51n5, 53, 6263,
65, 97, 9798n8; conferences and
meetings about SETI, participation in,
5254, 66; interaction between natural
scientists and, 50; role in SETI research,
5058, 9799, 111; SETI research
by, xiv, xvixvii, 50, 5558; subject of
messages sent by humans, opinions
about, 1079. See also Anthropology;
Archaeology.
Sofen, Jerry, 12
Soviet Union and Russia: cultural
complexity, 224; detection of signal by
scientists in, 27; SETI research in, 2,
27, 44, 96n3; theremin, 18182; US
Soviet conferences on extraterrestrial
intelligence, xvi, 5, 5253
Space Act (1958), 3
Space Station programs, xvi, 38
Space-time capsules, 176, 17879, 183,
185
Spain: Aztec civilization, contact with and
exploitation of, 14546; technology
development in, 221
Spectrum analyzers and spectrometers,
78, 1314, 35
Speed of light, xvii, 24, 154, 176, 180,
18687
Sperry, Elmer, 24
Spirit rover, 251
Spirituality and religion, 12527, 128,
16162, 184
Square Kilometer Array, 6
Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS),
xxviixxviii, xxviii n12, 22224, 225,
225n55
Stanford University, Summer Faculty
Fellowship Program, 45
Star Trek, 164n6, 218, 222n50
Stent, Gunther, 52
Sternberg, Robert J., 212
Stonehenge, 249250
Straus, William L., Jr., 25354
Stull, Mark, 8
Suitcase SETI, 10, 27
Sullivan, Woody, 10
Summer Faculty Fellowship Program,
45
Sun and Sun-like stars, 208, 20910
Superconducting Super Collider, 37
Super-Earth planets, 20910
Swenson, George, 10
Swift, David, 59
Symbolic interaction, 172
297
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Symbols. See Visual communication,
symbols, and signs.
T
Tarter, Donald, 18788, 189
Tarter, Jill: Commission 51, IAU, role,
16; flm character based on, 45n70;
funding for NASA SETI Program, 37;
HRMS observation summary, 20; IAF
SETI conference, 66; investigation
of strange signals, 36; meetings
between Congressional members and,
3940; NASA grants for research by,
46n79; NASA SETI observational
plans, 18; NASA SETI Program Plan
development, 14; NASA SETI Program
role, 9, 10, 12, 13, 18; SETI Institute
role, 13
Tax, Sol, 55, 56
Team Encounter, 18283
Technology: advanced technology,
intelligence for development of, xxvii
xxviii; advances in and broadening
of SETI search net, xiii, 44, 9697,
190; advantage of U.S. in complex
communication systems, 157;
applications for SETI technologies,
35; conditions necessary for creation
of, 216, 219; contact between diverse
terrestrial cultures and, 145152;
culture and development of, 108,
219227; defnition and concept of,
xxvii; evolution of, xvi, xvii; evolution
of technical civilizations, 5253, 62;
historical civilizations, technology
development potential, and intelligence,
22122; intelligence to create
communication technology, xxvii, 32,
205, 213, 21517, 22628; limitations
of and SETI, 15354; migration
and spread of advanced technology,
22526; population/settlement
size and development of, 22021,
22728; social organization and
development of, 219220; superiority
of Asian cultures, 145; superiority
of extraterrestrial civilizations, xxiv,
3334, 102; technological adolescence,
survival of, xvi, 77; unitary culture and
technologically advanced civilizations,
xxivxxv, 17072
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 120
Tempo and Mode in Evolution (Simpson),
195
Tenochtitln, 146, 221
Tesla, Nikola, 24
Teremin, 18182
Teremin, Leon, 181
Tompson, Eric, 7475
Time capsules, 17576, 17879, 183,
185
Tipler, Frank, 1011, 35n34
Tlaxcala Indians, 146
Tofer, Alvin, 5556
Tools: chimpanzee use of, 166n11;
manufacturing and use by humans,
214; Native American tools, 117, 119;
recognition of, 11617, 119, 12021,
12829
Tough, Allen, 6061
Towards Other Planetary Systems
(TOPS) Workshops, 27, 40
Townes, Charles, 7
Traphagan, John, 144
Trefl, James, 3435, 35n34
Tschopik, Marion H. Harry, 123
Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin, 96n3
Turkish culture, 224
Turkish language, 81, 87
Tylor, Edward Burnett, 131, 218
298
Index
U
Ukraine, radio transmissions from, xxvi
United Nations: Committee on
the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space
(COPUOS), 1617; communication
with extraterrestrials, role in, 176
Universal Darwinism, 203
Uttar Pradeshi culture, 224
V
Vakoch, Douglas A., 61, 9293, 104,
105, 107, 152, 172, 175, 177
Valentine, James, 2034
Ventris, Michael, xx, 85
Viking, Project, 3, 12
Vision, eyes, and eyesight: convergent
evolution and evolution of eyes, 199
200; human vision, 239; technology
creation and, 216
Visual communication, symbols, and
signs: categories of signs, 8688, 91;
clues for interpretation of, 9394; codes
or systems for interpretation, 8085,
80n1, 81n2; defnition of sign, 91;
design and subject of messages, xxv, 79,
8182, 8793, 12425, 17274, 177
78, 180, 182, 183, 24647, 247n15,
248, 249250; early communication
eforts, 179; Earth Speaks project, xxix,
xxixxxx; icons, 86, 87, 9192, 172;
importance of symbolism, 12325;
index signs, 86, 87, 88, 92, 9394;
interpretation of, 7982, 8994,
17274; interpretation of symbolic
artifacts, difculties associated with,
xxix, 8285, 24346, 245, 249250;
interpretive context and, 8082, 8994;
KEO satellite project, xxvi, 185, 188,
189190; limitations of, xxviiixxix;
A Message from Earth, 183; physics,
biophysics, sensory biophysics, and,
238240; Postcard Earth message,
xxix, 24647, 249; recognizing signs as
messages, 8182, 106; self-interpreting
signs, 9091; semiosis, 243; showing
and telling and interpretation of,
8889; support for use of, xxixxxx,
xxix n13; symbolic interaction, 172;
symbols and symbol systems, meaning
and interpretation of, xxii, 8485,
8688, 12425, 242; type of writing
system, identifcation of, 8485;
Voyager spacecraft plaque, 17778. See
also Communication; Messages.
Von Uexkll, Jakob, 232
Voyager spacecraft, xxvi, 17778, 190
Voynich manuscript, 244, 244n14, 245
W
Ward, Carol, 215
Ward, Peter, 2012
Water-hole region, electromagnetic
spectrum, 5, 25, 31
Watson, James L., 165
Webster, Larry, 19
Welch, Jack, 10, 13
Werthimer, Dan, 15, 186
Wescott, Roger W., 5657
White, Douglas, 222
Wilkinson, David, 226
Wilson, E. O., 63
Wolfe, John, 6, 7, 8, 10, 54
Wright, Sewall, 194, 195
Y
Young, Richard Dick, 3, 8n15
299
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
Z
Zaitsev, Alexander, 18082, 186
Zoo hypothesis, 34
Zuckerman, Ben, 10
300

Вам также может понравиться